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-5^ 







THE PERSONALITY OF EMERSON 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
E M E K S O N 

BY F. B. SANBORN 




BOSTON 
CHARLES E. GOODSPEED 

1903 



Copyright, 1903, by F. B. Sanborn 



THt L:BRAKY of 
T»»c Copiui rtec«iv«n 

WAY. 15 r^03 j 

j COPY tt. . ] 






D. B. Updike, The Merryniouiit Press, Boston 



PREFATORY NOTE 

Having determined to write a series of volumes 
describing the personal ti^aits of four distin- 
guished authors whom I intimately knew, — Km- 
erson, Thoreau, Ellery Channing, and Bronson 
Alcott, — / offer this volume as the second. So 
close were the relations of these friends, that men- 
tion of all is naturally made in each hook, involv- 
ing some rejjetitio?!. Frovi these books, illustrated 
with portraits, a good concejition is had of tJie 
Concord school of poets and philosophers, who 

were so distinctly original. 
I 
I A part of the plan was to give in each hook the 

I best portrait, with a facsimile of manuscript. The 

i portrait of Thoreau did not appear in " The 

I Personality of Thoreau^' hut was reserved for 

I Channing s life. Kmersons portrait here given 

was painted hy David Scott at Edinburgh in 

1848, but reached America thirty years later, and 

j was never well engraved before. In some respects 

it is the best of many porti'aits. 

F. B. S. 

Concord, February 11-, 1903. 



THE PERSONALITY OF EMERSON 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
E 31 E R S O N 

In writing of my comparatively short acquaint- 
ance with Henry Thoreau, I was easily able to re- 
call the circumstances under which I first became 
acquainted, not only with his person, but with his 
mind. It was not so in my relations with Emer- 
son; for so early did I begin to read his writings, 
that I can hardly remember when I did not know 
them, at least superficially. A natural affinity for 
the school of thought which he most clearly rep- 
resented, and something akin to his intuitions in 
my own way of viewing personal and social mat- 
ters, brought me into relations with him long be- 
fore I ever saw him, or heard that thrilling voice 
which few who had listened to its deeper tone 
could ever forget. I was indeed as much younger 
than Emerson as Persius was younger than his 
revered Stoic philosopher, Cornutus; but I could 
have said, and often did say to myself, after be- 
coming intimate with the Concord philosopher, 

[ 1 ] 



Tuv. rKusoNAi.rrv ov 

what vouui;' Pcrsius proclaimed in lasting Latin 
verse : - 

•* .Vfwvio qiuxl iTrt(' <>V. qtuMi tw tibi teitipt'mt Ofttnitu." 
'T was suro sJoino star attunod luy tato to thine. 

I must have begun to read Kmerson before six- 
teen; tor in my sixteenth year 1 remember perus- 
ing' ^vith indignation Franeis ln">\ven*s review ot^ 
the l\h'nis, which eame out in the Xorfh ^l/ncri- 
Cii'i lii'vir:*.' for 1S47: and it was soon atter that 
1 tirst made Carlyle's acquaintance in his early 
book. Siirtor Ixcsarfus. The second edition of Em- 
erson's \iifi//-c came in 184l>, when I was seven- 
teen: and at eiiihteen 1 had read the J\ssiii/s. and 
the remarkable biographical criticism of Plato, 
Shakespeare. Montaigne, and Napoleon in Ixcp- 
ristvifafiic ^^cn. l>ut the little town where 1 was 
born and spent all these earliest years, with the 
exception of a few weeks at Boston in 18 to. 
though abounding in good books and inspiring 
teachei"s. hardly cn er attracted a lecturer of more 
than local repute: and Kxeter. its market-town 
and seat of learning, had no inclination to invite 
Transeendentalists to its "Lyceum.'* 1 remember 



EMERSON 
in my nineteenth year, as I was reading Greek 
with Professor Hoyt of the Exeter Academy, he 
related to me how his classmates at Dartmouth 
invited Emerson in 18*38 to give them that grand 
discourse on lAtei^ary Etfdcs which was one of 
the first of his orations I had read, how few under- 
stood it, and how Emerson repelled the proposal 
of reporting it. "I curse the Reporters," said the 
gentle sage, — "I curse them"; so, at least, my old 
teacher reported that Emerson at Hanover had 
said to him. 15ut when, many years after, I cited 
this remark to Emerson, he could not believe he 
had made it. But his opinion was so constant, — 
that the casual reporter is sure to misunderstand 
and misrcport, — and he had suffered so often 
therefrom, that I never really doubted the exact 
memory of Professor Hoyt. Singularly enough, 
Emerson disliked even the exact reporter, though 
for a different reason, of course. He was almost 
morbidly sensitive about repeating his essays to 
those who had read them in full; thinking it de- 
prived him of their fresh attention, and lost them 
the interest of surprise, on which his rhetoric so 

[3 ] 



riii: ri: USC1N A i.rrv ov 

hirgoly dopoiulcd at the tirst lu\irino-. In the last 
decade ot' his hte he o-ave in Coneord that essay 
on J\/o(/uc/u't' Nvhieh eanie out shortly before his 
death, in the volume ealled Lcttrrs a>ul Social 
-7/W, — a title that o"aN e hin\ nuieh trouble, like 
the definition of •'eivili/ation.'" It was new to n\e, 
in February, 1S7.'>. and I knew it would be pleas- 
ing to readers of the Sprin^fichl lirpui'Iicu/i. I 
therefore took full notes, and spent the next day 
or two in looking;; up the orators he had quoteil. — 
l.atavette. John Quiney Adams, and Canning-. — 
and was tortunate enouixh to tind the very pai::e 
from whieh he had eopied a remarkable address 
of l.atavette to the Chamber o{ Deputies ^.lune 
•Jl. 1S1.>\ in whieh he threw down the gauntlet 
to Napoleon. 

As Kmei-son, for some reason, omitted it from 
his volume, and it may be unknown to my 
readers. I will ipiote it as Kmei-son read it to us 
at the Coneord ••l.yeeum"": — 

••Napoleon, returning from Elba, was obliged 
to summon a Chamber of Deputies, and among 
them eame Lafayette. A\'hen Napoleon eame baek 



EMERSON 
fiom Waterloo to Paris, he resolved to abolish 
this Assembly. Lafayette heard of it. In the first 
session afterward he ascended the tribune with- 
out delay, and said: 'When for the first time in 
many years I raise in this Chamber a voice which 
the Jriends of free institutions will ixcognizCy I 
feel myself called upon, Gentlemen, to address 
you respecting the dangers of the country, which 
you alone are now able to save. Sinister reports 
have been spread abroad ; they are now unhappily 
confirmed. The moment has arrived for rallying 
around the old tri-colored standard of 1789, — 
the standard of liberty, equality, and public or- 
der. Permit, Gentlemen, a veteran in this sacred 
cause, one who was ever a stranger to the spirit of 
faction, to submit to you some resolutions, — the 
necessity of which, I trust, you will feel as I do. 
Let this Assembly declare itself in permanent 
session ; let it send for the ministers of State, and 
require of them a report on the present aspect 
of affairs.' The Assembly voted as Lafayette had 
proposed. Then Lucien 15onaparte, who was a 
deputy, rose in his place, bowed to Lafayette with 

[5] 



riii: rEUSDNAi.irv of 

protbuiul respect, and lett the liall. In two honrs 
Xapoleon sent in his abdieation," 

But to n\y story. \\'hen this report appeared, 
five days atter. in my newspaper, Eniei-son saw it 
and was grieved. He met me in the street and 
said, •'You slunild not iiave reported mv cpiota- 
tions. Dog nuist not eat dog." I exphiined my rea- 
sons; but they did not eonvinee Ihm: he wislied 
to use tliat lecture again, and thought this report 
hindered him. 

It was not till 1 entered Harvard College, in 
the sunnner o( \S'y2. that 1 liad oppcn-tunities 
of heariniT and meeting Kmerson. I hail heard 
Theodore Parker in the year before: but in .\pril, 
1851, when I visited Hoston for the second time, 
and Concord for the tirst time, Kmerson was not 
making public addresses, in the week or ten days 
at my disposal; and though 1 passed his house, 
whose door stood invitingly open (his daughter 
Ellen descending the stairway, remindino- me of 
some angel in Allston's Jacob's JJrcam), I had 
not then the courage to call on him. I did so for 
the hrst time in .hily. 1853. after hearing him 

[ (^ J 



1 : M E R S O N 
lecture occasioMjilly, and after meeting Alcott, 
Parker, Mrs. Cheney, and others of his friends. I 
had walked up from Cambridge to Concord over 
the Turnj)ike, on my way to visit Henry Shaw, a 
former schoolmate, in Sudbury. Reaching Emer- 
son's house, at the corner where the Cambridge 
Turnpike debouches into the I^exington road 
(now JNIassachusetts Avenue), about eleven in 
the morning, I rang the bell and was shown at 
once into the study, where Emerson sat in his 
accustomed chair, facing the Fates of IMichel 
Anirelo over the mantel. He was either reading 
or writing, as his morning habit was. I had no 
letter of introduction, but perhaps used the name 
of some mutual friend, Alcott or Parker; was 
received graciously, and questioned about the 
young men in College, where I had just ended 
my Sophomore year, with some small tokens of 
distinction among classmates, — a Society Poem, 
or something of the kind. I observed that, after 
giving me one of those gently piercing glances 
which took in so much of the character of his 
visitors, he did not look directly at me in ques- 

[T ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 

tioning or replying; but gazed at one side, as if 
withdrawing his mind from persons to ideas. 
What I remember best of his remarks is his hop- 
ing to see a "good crop of mystics at Harvard," 
— the last place in which many of that class were 
to be found, or had been, for some years. 

Emerson w^as then in the vigor of middle age, 
just turned of fifty, in good health and fine color, 
with abundant dark brown hair, no beard, but a 
slight whisker on each cheek, and plainly dressed. 
His form was never other than slender, after I 
knew him, and his shoulders, like Thoreau's, had 
that peculiar slope which had attracted notice in 
England, where the New England type of Anglo- 
Norman was not so well known as it has since 
become. His striking features were the noble 
brow, from which the hair was carelessly thrown 
back, though not long, and the mild and penetrat- 
ing blue eye, smiling, in its social mood, in the 
most friendly manner, but capable, on rare occa- 
sions, of much severity. The portrait by David 
Scott, painted at Edinburgh five years before, 
erred by giving him a complexion and an eye too 

[8] 



EMERSON 
dark; but in its general expression was then al- 
most perfect; and five years later, in 1858, Rowse 
drew and threw aside an unfinished head which 
best preserves the noble serenity of his gaze. 

From the date of this visit, although at first I 
saw Emerson but seldom, I felt at ease in his 
company, except in those moments which all his 
intimates experienced (and some of them bitterly 
lamented and complained of), when he seemed 
to be removed to an infinite distance from human 
companionship, and hardly to recognize the pres- 
ence of those with whom he seemed to be con- 
versing. This trait, or circumstance,^ for it must 
have been a part of his fate, rather than an ele- 
ment in his disposition, which was eminently so- 
cial and friendly, — I was wont to explain by his 
superiority of nature, which of necessity isolated 
him from those around him, until by the force of 
will and generosity he brought himself within the 
daily round of common thoughts and cares, in 
which he did not naturally belong. His was the 
higher poetic nature, to which the phenomenal 
world presents itself as a phantasm rather than a 

[9 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 

fact, and from which the daily events and com- 
panionships of Hfe seem strangely averse and re- 
mote. The ecstasies and profundities of religious 
and philosophic meditation are akin to this poetic 
exaltation; and all were mingled and exemplified 
in some of those experiences which Emerson has 
himself narrated, and which appeared also in the 
solitary and thoughtful spiritual life of his eccen- 
tri'c aunt, JNIary JNIoody Emerson. To her, as he 
was wont to say, he was much indebted for his 
early induction into the graver paths of self-cul- 
ture. The typical passage on this matter in Em- 
erson's books is that which occurs so early in the 
first one, his philosophic abridgment called JVa- 
tu?%', where he says of himself: "All mean egotism 
vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am 
nothing, I see all; the currents of the Universal 
Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel 
of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds 
then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to 
be acquaintances, — master or servant, is then a 
trifle and a disturbance." 

This abstraction and aloofness of mind, if its 
[10 j 



EMERSON 
powers are once turned toward human things, 
gives extreme clearness of vision and apprecia- 
tion. Emerson said of himself, "I have the fatal 
gift of perception"; and those who saw much of 
him soon learned to understand this, without al- 
ways knowing from what quality in his nature 
so remarkable a gift proceeded. Simplicity had 
something to do with it, and the poetic eye 
much more. George Chapman, himself a poet 
of no mean order, in dedicating his version of 
Homer to Lord Howard of Walden, said well 
of Poesy, personified: — 

''Virtue, in all things else at best, she betters. 

Honor she heightens, and gives life in death; 
She is the ornament and soul of letters; 

The world's deceit before her vanisheth : 
Simple she is as doves, like serpents wise, 

Sharp, grave and sacred ; nought but things divine 
And things divining fit her faculties, — 

Accepting her as she is genuine." 

This saying could hardly be applied in literal 
strictness to any man; but it came near to the 
higher moods of Emerson. He had also a prac- 
tical side, which often puzzled those who expected 

[n ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
to find him all sage or all poet, and perceived in- 
stead an unusual versatility or even worldliness. 
This is said to have been less noticeable before 
his second visit to England in 1847-48, which was 
some years earlier than I saw him; it was recog- 
nized, however, by Low^ell in his clever portrayal 
of Emerson in the F able for Critics, which first 
appeared in 1848: — 

''A Greek head on rii^ht Vankee shoulders, whose ran^e 
Has Olympus for one pole, for t'other the Exchange; 
A I'lotinus-Montaigne, where the Egyptian's gold mist 
And the Gascon's shrewd wit cheek-by-jowl coexist; 
He sits in a mystery calm and intense^ 
And looks coolly around him with sharp common-sense." 

When I first knew him, in the years 1858-56, 
the long conflict over the questions of American 
slavery was shaping itself for final decision by 
the ordeal of battle; and Emerson had taken his 
public attitude on it some ten years earlier, — a 
fact which for a time escaped the notice of his 
friend and correspondent Carlyle, who was inclin- 
ing to the support of negro slavery, from his con- 
tempt for the African, and his worship of force. 

[ 12 ] 



EMERSON 
It was about this time, say in 1854, when I had 
become a frequent visitor at Theodore Parker's 
hospitable house in Exeter Place, Boston, that he 
told me the story of his own colloquy with Car- 
lyle on this point, in the Chelsea house, in 1843, 
at an evening conversation when Doctor John 
Carlyle was present, and several contemporaries 
were discussed. Parker found the two Carlyles sit- 
ting round the open fire, where on the hob was the 
kettle heating for the Scotch beverage of whiskey 
punch. At first, literature w^as the theme, and 
Tennyson, then just rising into note as a poet, 
though he had been long known to Emerson, in 
the early edition of 1833, which, bound in red 
morocco, used to lie on Emerson's table. Parker, 
who was not so good a judge of poets as of theo- 
logues, began to give Carlyle his notion of Ten- 
nyson, as an exquisite who arrayed himself for 
writing verse in a silk-lined dressing-gown, and, 
seated at an inlaid table, with a gold-tipped quill, 
would indite verses on satin paper, like "Airy, 
fairy Lilian" or Claribcl. Carlyle laughed loud at 
the picture. "Ow, that's not so at all, — Alfred 

[ 13] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
comes here and drinks his toddy and smokes his 
pipe Uke the rest of us ; he 's no dandy nor milk- 
sop." America then coming up for consideration, 
Carlyle began to rail against "Quashee" and the 
Abolitionists, whose cause Parker championed, of 
course. But Carlyle said, "Your neighbor Emer- 
son's no Abolitionist; he thinks about these things 
much as I do." "On the contrary," said Parker, 
"he no longer withdraws from association with 
active reformers, like Garrison, but is outspok- 
en against negro slavery." Carlyle could hardly 
believe it. "But," said Parker to me, "when I 
reached home in 1844, and Emerson had printed 
that trenchant address on JFest India Emancipa- 
tion, which Mrs. Brooks, Mrs. Emerson, and the 
Thoreaus made an occasion for him to give in 
Concord (August 1, 1844), I had the satisfaction 
of sending the pamphlet to Carlyle at Chelsea." 
It contained this passage, among others, which 
indicates how the slave question addressed itself 
to Emerson when I first knew him: — 

"As I have walked in these pastures and along 
the edge of woods, I could not keep my imagina- 

[ 1^ ] 



EMERSON 
tion on agreeable figures, for other images that 
intruded on me. I could not see the great vision 
of the patriots and senators who have adopted the 
slave's cause, — they turned their backs on me. 
No: I see other pictures, — of mean men: I see 
very poor, very ill-clothed, very ignorant men, not 
surrounded by happy friends, — to be plain, poor 
black men of obscure employment as mariners, 
cooks or stewards in ships, yet citizens of this 
our Commonwealth, — freeborn as we, whom the 
slave-laws of South Carolina have arrested in ves- 
sels, and shut up in jails. This man, these men, 
these men I see, and no law to save them. . . . 
Gentlemen, I thought the deck of a Massachu- 
setts ship was as much the territory" of Massachu- 
setts as the floor on which we stand. It should be 
as sacred as the temple of God. If such a dam- 
nable outrage can be committed on the person of 
a citizen with impunity, let the Governor break 
the broad seal of the State; he bears the sword 
in vain." 

No doubt Emerson was thinking of the crest 
and legend on the State seal of our State, — the 

[ 1.5 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
arm with uplifted sword grasped in a firm hand, 
picturing the first half-fine of Algernon Sidney's 
inscription in the table-book of the King of Den- 
mark, — while the legend gave the other line, 
promising freedom to all who might come under 
our flag: — 

"Maims hcec, inimica tyrannis, 
Ense petit pkicidam suh libertate quietem." 

This device and motto, selected by John Adams, 
who framed our first State Constitution, and pre- 
sided at its revision, forty years after, I once 
translated thus: — 

This hand, the tyrant's foe^ 
Seeks peace, through freedom, with a manly blow. 

Emerson had a great admiration for both the 
Adamses, John and John Quincy; he once told 
me that John Adams was in his view the great- 
est of the Revolutionary patriots, — superior to 
Franklin or Jefferson, and, though not Washing- 
ton's equal in moral qualities or military talent, 
a far better writer. Washington, he said, was a 
heavy writer, and against Jefferson he had re- 
tained some of the prejudices of the Boston Fed- 

[ 16] 



EMERSON 
eralists, in which he had grown up. His brother 
Edward, who died early in Porto Rico, was tu- 
tor of some of the elder Adams's grandsons, and 
Waldo Emerson liked to relate the visit the two 
brothers made to the old statesman at Quincy ; he 
read it to me from his journal of February, 1825, 
before he included it in his essay on Old Age. 
They found the old President in his easy-chair, 
calmly awaiting the death that found him there 
the next year. When they asked him about his 
son, who had just been chosen President, he 
praised the political prudence of John Quincy 
Adams, but said, " I shall never see him again ; he 
will not come to Quincy but to my funeral; it 
would be a great satisfaction to me to see him, 
but I don't wish him to come on my account." 
He lived to see his son more than once, though 
ninety years old in 1825. When I related to Em- 
erson a story of Adams in his old age, whicli I had 
from Theodore Parker, and he from Reverend 
Doctor Gray of Roxbury, he refused to believe it, 
such was his veneration for John Adams; though 
the anecdote was quite in keeping with his well- 

[IT J 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
known irascibility. Doctor Gray was invited to 
dine with the ex-President at the house of a pa- 
rishioner, and, as JNIr. Adams was leaving early, 
the Doctor stepped into the hall to help him on 
with his overcoat. Then ensued this colloquy: — 
Adams. I thank you, Doctor Gray, for your po- 
lite attention. 

Gray. Do not mention it, Mr. Adams; no at- 
tention is too great, no trouble is too much, that 
we of this century have the privilege of taking 
for the patriots of the Revolution, — for General 
Washington and yourself. Sir. 
Adams. Do not name Washington to me, Sir! 
Washington was a dolt! 

"No," said Emerson, "I cannot believe that 
story;" nor would he, when I gave him my au- 
thority. He loved also to cite the eloquence of 
John Quincy Adams, which he has described in 
one of his essays. Indeed, he was a follower of 
eloquent men, and once told me that he reported 
a great speech of Harrison Gray Otis, then reck- 
oned Boston's chief orator, and was complimented 
by Otis on his accuracy. He had in truth a re- 

[ 18] 



EMERSON 
markable verbal memory, as all poets should have; 
since much of their easy writing of verse depends 
upon it. 

Quincy Adams was dead and gone before I 
ever saw Emerson ; so was Webster before I ever 
conversed with him; but Emerson liked to com- 
memorate those earlier days, before Webster made 
his gran rifiuto, in 1850, and went to his grave 
in 1852 under the heavy censure of the best sen- 
timent in Massachusetts. It was to Emerson that 
Carlyle in 1839 wrote his remarkable word-por- 
trait of Webster in England, which the Concord 
friend allowed Webster's biographers to copy, and 
which disclosed the unhandsome as well as the 
glorious features of his character. In 1845, when 
Webster and Choate came to Concord for a week, 
to defend the fraudulent bank officer (against 
whose offence there was then no countervailing 
law), and got him acquitted, Mrs. Emerson, who 
remembered Webster in black dress-coat and 
small-clothes at the Plymouth Pilgrim festival of 
1820, where he made one of his noblest orations, 
gave a reception for Webster and the gentlemen 

[ 19 J 



THE PERSONALITY OF 

of the Middlesex Bar, of which the leader was 
then Samuel Hoar of Concord, father of Senator 
Hoar. Edward Emerson, before his health gave 
way, and he went to the West Indies in tlie lu^pe 
of restoration, had been the tutor of AVebster's 
sons, and had studied law in the great man's Bos- 
ton office. But the flaw in the metal of \\\4)ster 
did not escape the piercing insight of Emerson, 
long before he betrayed his trust on the slavery 
question. He told me one or two anecdotes of 
Webster's chronic insensibility to the demands 
of hc^nor where money was concerned, — one of 
them dating back before 1830; and when the 
March speech of 1850 came to shatter the hopes 
of Webster's anti-slavery friends, whom he should 
have led instead of deserting, Emerson ^^Tote in 
his journal: — 

">A'liy did all manly gifts in ^Vebster fiiil? 
Ho wrote on Nature's noblest brow, Foh Sai^." 

He also, just before I made his personal acquaint- 
ance, gave a public address, at Cambridge and 
elsewhere, in which he portrayed the scope of 
Webster's mind, antl the lack of moral greatness 

[ -^0 ] 



EMERSON 

in the man so grandly endowed; but he would 
never publish it, and it has never appeared in full. 
Of W^ildo Emerson's brothers, to whom he 
was most tenderly attached, I saw only \Mlliam, 
the eldest, and Bulkeley, the "innocent," — who, 
though a bright and capable child up to the age 
of ten or twelve, then liad his mental growth 
arrested by sc^me severe malady, and continued 
through a long life to be dependent on others 
for his care and comfort. AVhile I knew him, he 
resided in Littleton, a few miles west of Con- 
cord, adjoining Harvard, where his father, Rev- 
erend William Emerson, had his first parish, and 
where many of the descendants of Reverend 
Peter Bulkeley, the founder of Concord in 1635, 
were then living. William Emerson was a lawyer 
of success in New York City, with a house on 
Staten Island before I knew him, in which Tho- 
reau lived for a time in 1843, as the tutor of his 
three sons, and where EUery Channing, during his 
short residence in New York as one of the editors 
of the Tribune, under Horace Greeley, used to 
visit. I soon met William Emerson at his brother's 

[ 21 ] 



T H E r K U S N A L I T V O F 

luniso in Concord, and wlien I first visited Now 
York, in tlic spring" ot" 18,)(». I dined at his citv 
house, anil heard tVoni liini the story of his in- 
terview witli Cioethe in 18l\"). or about that time. 
Kmerson liad early told n\e of tliis. and that, 
"svlien the young* .Vnieriean. who was destined for 
the pulpit, like his ancestors for many oenera- 
tions. laid before the Cicrman sage his religious 
doubts, and sought counsel whether lie should 
preach or not. Cioethe advised him to swallow his 
scruples and preach. The conscientious Christian 
could not do this; he returned to his mother's 
Koxbury lu>me in October, lS-5. and saddened 
her by giving up his purpose of entering the min- 
istry, beginning the study of law soon after. He 
was a faithful, court ei>us. but slightly formal i>-en- 
tleman, well read and aifectionate. but rather anti- 
pathetic to Thoreau and the more eccentric Tran- 
scendentalists. 1 also knew for a few years that 
notewcn'thy aunt oi' the Kmersons, Miss ^Nlary 
bloody Emerson, the youngest child of Emerson's 
grandfather, who built the C^ld Manse, where she 
was born; and she used to say "she was in arms 

[ -^^.^ ] 



EMERSON 

at Concord Fii>ht" because her niotlier (who had 
a brother and cousins on tlic Tory side) held her 
up at the window to see the redcoats as they 
marched past the Parsonage on their way to the 
historic North Ih-idge. She was therefore more 
than eighty when I met her at her nephew's fire- 
side, — a small, energetic, by no means beautiful 
person, but of singular talents and much origi- 
nality, which had been of great service to the 
chilihvn of iier deceased brother, as they grew up 
under her eye. Like her nephew, she had great 
regard for beautiful persons, — men, women, or 
children, — and equally good esteem for original 
persons, though they might hold opinions which 
she abhorred. Thoreau was such a person; and 
her interest in him, which he reciprocated, gave 
a piquancy to their interviews, and to her com- 
ments on him. made to me and others. She did 
not accept Bronson Alcott in the same way, 
though admiring his fine aspect and graceful 
manners. AN'hcn she first heard hmi explain his 
new system of instruction for children, which he 
was then exemplifying in Boston, she wrote to 

[ ^^^o ] 



r II E r E K S N A L I T V O F 
him (October 30, 1835) thus: — 

"While the form dazzled, — Avhile the speaker 
inspired confidence, — the foundations of the — 
the — superstructure, gilded and oolden. was in 
depths of, — I Avill tell you plainly what, wlu-n I 
am furnished more with terms as well as prin- 
ciples. Xo marA el that Age is at a loss to express 
itself about a system, theory or whatever, which 
is proposed for Infancy. If you will l^n e the kind- 
ness to send me a letter including the Conversa- 
tion, and as nuu-li more as you can afford, I will, 
if vou give leave, express myself more plainly, on 
a eround which now seems to oive wav to mv 
literality and common-sense philosophy. It will 
gratifv me if vou will read a book which I left 
for you at Front Street, 13. It is an antidote to 
vtnn- opinions, and is modern Unitarianism of a 
hiiiher order; and I know no one whom I wish to 
read it more than yoin-seltV 

Having administered this courtly reproof, Miss 
INIary gave the needful sugar-plum at the close 
of her letter: "JMr. Emerson came to welcome me 
home; but he talked of nothing but the pleasure 

[ '^^ ] 



EMERSON 
of seeing you. Affectionate regards to Mrs. Al- 
cott, and hearty wishes for your success." Three 
years later, when the "tempest in a wash-bowl," 
as Emerson styled it, over his Divinity Hall Ad- 
dress of 1838 was raging, this proud and loving, 
but controversial, aunt of his wrote to her half- 
brother. Reverend Samuel Ripley of Waltham 
(who had married her dearest young friend. Miss 
Sarah Bradford), as follows: — 

[No year date, but presumably 1889, — the postage six cents.] 

"Belfast, 18 (Sabbath ev'g) November. 
''My dear Brother: 

" The pleasure of hearing of yoiir clerical arrangements by the Reg- 
" ister last week makes me write for very gladness. What time will 
" be given you, — and how desirable to unite the sheep into onefold! 
" A subject which I have waited since Sarah's conversation in the 
" Vale [Old Manse^ to know about, with no little interest. And God 
"forbid that you preach asyoti jvrite to me, when expatiating on the 
" virtues of those whose Christian foith is broken up into the glitter- 
" ing fragments of a corrupted philosophy and pantheistic specters! 
" Talk of Waldo's virtues, — / know and respect theyn, — so had 
"Spinoza and Fichte and Kant \yiriues\ And theij were and are 
" the gifts of that Being who may be said to laugh at their chimeras. 
" To talk of a holy life and benevolence, as you do, unless those 
" virtues are based on the personal Infinite, is like mistaking the me- 

[25] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 

" teors of night Jhr the lamp of dat/. The constitution of man for- 
" bids it, — histori/ pnnrs it, — and Ixcirlation nitixt he left out of 
'' the (juestion to projesx it. It /.v true that the Jine feelings and in- 
'- stincts mail prevail in the high and pleasant places for a time; 
*• /)/// eren these hare reecired their charms from that dirine phi- 
" losophy which the// are outshining. 

"Xo, — the onli/ hasis of all virtue must he (so divineli/ consti- 
" tuted is our poor nature, with all its awful capaciti/ for sin J — 
" ///(// //•(• (//•(• capahle of loving supremelii the Infinite : and on that 
"capaciti/ is engrafted all hencvolcnt principle: while the criterion 
'' of virtue in its hitrhest state must ahvai/s he, that one n-oiild not 
" sin, were the Deiti/ never to know it. But is it not to ohedience unto 
" His moral law guiding our conscience, that we owe thi,K love of 
"- Truth, .Justice, Benevolence, — ////•<■(• divine attrihutes? Is it not 
" thro' a personi/ication of them in Jesus that we have heen cnlight- 
'• ened, and the charms of these modern philosophers have heen thus 
''derived? J continue to desire the correspondence of Norton ami 
" Ixiplei/, — especialli/ as I have read Furness, and with delight, at 
" some glimpses he catches of our Master: while his theori/ is often 
" upset hi/ facts. lie is an idealist, perhaps, and must stand some- 
'• what tattling. And n'are's sermon I should ///c to horrow, and 
"the F.din. Heview for Oct. ./N?.''. There is a woeful scarciti/ of 
" hooks (modern J here. Let Waldo know of the means of sending, 
" ififou chance to see him. And now, dear S., farewell .' preach as at 
" Waltham ; the dai/ and the hour of Sahhath e.rcitement I remcmher 
'' //'/'/// sad pleasure. Love to Sarah, whose hrilliant and coniprchcn- 
" sive suhjects Lizzie [liiplci/] tells me about. 

"Your ajf Sister, M. M. E. 

[ 2() ] 



EMERSON 

" Say not a word of llic contents of this to Waldo, as you 
" would be true to me. / have alxo a letter to him Inj the same 
"mail, and forgot to name the means of writing, etc." 

It vvjis this lady who, admiring the brilhant wit 
(3f Talleyrand, — not unlike her own, except that 
hers was erowded with devout imaginings, — said 
with a sigh, "I fear he is not organized for a 
future state." Her nephew Waldo, whom she 
trained and inspired, and whom she did not wish 
to pain by her censures written to his Uncle llip- 
ley, once said of her, — "Her wit was so fertile, 
and only used to strike, that she never used it for 
display, any more than a wasp would parade his 
sting." He told me tliat "she was in her time the 
best writer in Massachusetts"; and he gave this 
parallel in a public lecture, largely made up of 
his Aunt Mary's writings: — 

"When I read Dante the other day, and his 
paraphrases to signify with more adequateness 
Christ or Jehovah, whom do you think I was re- 
minded of? W^hom but Mary Emerson and her 
elocjuent theology?" 

Twenty years or so after this thrust at Al- 
[27] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
cott's theories and her nephew's Transcendental- 
ism, I saw her rise up in Emerson's parlor and in- 
veigh with sudden vehemence and success against 
what she thouglit the antinomian declarations 
by Henry James, Senior, setting at naught the 
moral law, and replying to Alcott and Thoreau, 
in a set conversation, with some of his usual para- 
doxes. It was in December, 1858, and Thoreau 
thus sketched the scene in one of his letters to 
Harrison Blake: — 

" I met Henry James the other night at Emer- 
son's, at an Alcottian conversation, at which, liow- 
ever, Alcott did not talk much, being disturbed 
by James's opposition. The latter is a hearty man 
enough, with whom you can differ very satisfac- 
torily, both on account of his doctrines and his 
good temper. He utters quasi-phihmthropic dog- 
mas in a metaphysic dress; but they are, for all 
practical purposes, very crude. He charges society 
with all tlie crime committed, and praises the 
criminal for committing it. But T think that all 
the remedies he suggests out of his head, — for he 
goes no farther, hearty as he is, — would leave us 

[28] 



EMERSON 

about where we are now." 

The question is as new and fresh to-day as it 
was when Mary Emerson/ with her citations from 
the Bible and Doctor Samuel Clarke, denounced 
the smiling and much-amused James for his lax 
notions, — clasping her hands and raising them 
above her head, with its odd fillet of black silk, 
worn to conceal a scar. Enthusiasm, tempered by 
decorum, seems to have been the mark of the 
Emerson family; for I have heard Mrs. Sarah 
Ripley tell how, in the Boston house where the 
clergyman's widow, assisted by Mary Emerson, 
was feeding, clothing, and training her orphan 
sons, Charles Chauncy Emerson, sitting in his 
low chair near his aunt, while her caller was talk- 
ing, would start up and interpose a remark, ex- 
cited by the subject they were discussing, and 
would need to be quieted by the good lady. 

Of this brother Charles I have heard Emerson 
speak, but not so much as of his older brother 
Edward, already mentioned, the handsomest and 
most brilliant (by report) of this noted family. 
Doctor Holmes, in his first long poem, read at 

[29] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 

Harvard Colleoe, mentioned Charles Emerson 
and his then reeent death, and ai»ain, in address- 
ing the Historical Society after \\'aldo Emerson's 
death in 18S2, he said with nuich feeling: — 

"Of Charles, the youngest brother, I knew 
something in my college days; a beautiful, high- 
souled, pure, exquisitely delicate nature, in a 
slight but finely wrought mortal frame. He was 
for me the very ideal of an embodied celestial in- 
telligence. Coming into my room one day, he took 
up a copy of Hazlitt's British Pods, opened it to 
the poem of Andrew INIarvell, The XijwpJi Com- 
phiiiiiuij:; J'or the Death of her Fcncn, and read it 
to me, with delight irradiating his expressive fea- 
tures. I felt, as many have felt after being with 
his brother AValdo, that I had entertained an 
angel visitant. The Fawn of Marvell's imagina- 
tion sur\ ives in my memory as the fitting image 
to recall this beautiful youth; a soul glowing like 
the rose of morning with its enthusiasm, — a char- 
acter white as the lilies in its purity." 

It must have been some three years after this 
that Charles Emerson, visiting his grandfather's 

[30] 



C^ ^^w), J-yj /f • f''-'^ 







I- 







fUir. 4)^. /^/' 



EMERSON 
Old Manse before Waldo went there to write his 
first book. Nature, wrote the accompanying letter 
to Doctor Ripley, whose house had been the re- 
sort of the brothers in their youth, and for whom 
they cherished a warm affection. It will interest 
from the rarity of his writings, of which but few 
have been printed by his more famous brother, 
and from the allusion made in it to the teaching 
of Greek to girls at that early date in Concord. 
One of the "young ladies" was doubtless INIiss 
Elizabeth Hoar, to whom in after years Charles 
was affianced. 

This acquaintance begun with Waldo Emerson 
in the summer of 1853 soon became intimacy. In 
college with me, though in an earlier class, were 
the son of his boy-companion and schoolmate, 
the late Doctor Furness of Philadelphia, — now 
illustrious as the Shakespearian scholar and edi- 
tor, Doctor Horace Furness, — and his two class- 
mates, Charles Russell Lowell, better known as 
General Lowell, the nephew of the poet, who 
died in Sheridan's famous fight near Winchester, 
in 18G4, and the late .John Bancroft, elder son 

[31 J 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
of Bancroft the liistoriMii. Emerson invited the 
four of us to dine with him in Concord in May, 
1854, and we visited the town together for that 
purpose. The occasion was a very pleasant social 
one; but what dwells most in my recollection, 
from the oddity of the incident, is the fact that 
on our way through the village to the Emerson 
residence we found the dead walls near the old 
tavern (Middlesex Hotel) placarded with carica- 
tures and inscriptions derogatory to Doctor 15art- 
lett, the good old physician who was the lead- 
ing total-abstinence citizen, and who had been 
prominent in a recent closure of the hotel bar, 
where liquors were dispensed contrary to law. This 
would not have been so noticeable, were it not 
that among the caricatures and opprobrious words 
was one great sheet attacking "Rev. R. W. E.," 
who had been a supporter of Doctor Bartlett in 
his procedure. This was the day, it seems, which 
Doctor Edward Emerson, who succeeded Doctor 
Bartlett for a few years as the village physician, 
commemorates in his volume, Kmerson in Con- 
cord, as the only instance of any incivility offered 

[ 32 ] 



EMERSON 
to Emerson in the town which he honored by 
his residence for nearly half a century. Doctor 
Emerson says: — 

"It was the practice of the bar-room w'its to 
revenge themselves for Doctor Bartlett's coura- 
geous and sincere war upon their temple, by 
lampooning him in doggerel verse. One morning 
there was a sign hung out at the Middlesex stable 
with inscription insulting to Doctor Bartlett. Mr. 
Emerson came down to the Post Office, stopped 
beneath the sign, read it, and did not leave the 
spot till he had beaten it down with his cane. In 
tlie afternoon when I went to school I remem- 
ber my mortification at seeing a new board hang- 
ing there, with a painting of a man with a tall 
hat, long nose, and hooked cane raised aloft; and 
lest the portrait might not be recognized, the 
inscription ran, 'Rev. R. W. E. knocking down 
the Sign.' " 

As Edward Emerson was then but ten years 
old, his memory may be a little at fault; for the 
caricature, as I recall it, was a rough charcoal 
sketch, and the Bartlett inscriptions, which had 

[33] 



THE PERSONALITY OE 
been renewed, were on pasteboard, nailed to the 
side of the tavern stable which abutted on the 
sidewalk across the "Mill Dam," as the short street 
of shops was then called, because laid out over 
what had been the village miller's grist-mill dam 
in Revolutionary days. Of course, we college stu- 
dents respected the village lampoon. 

There had been an earlier gathering of students 
from Cambridge in the Emerson drawing-room 
in October, 1853, to listen to a conversation, in 
which, I believe, Bronson Alcott was the leader, 
as he was in May, 1854, when a similar company 
gathered there. Of this October conversation I 
have but a dim remembrance, having made no 
record of it, as I did in the one following. In May, 
185 i, while most of the party went to Concord 
by train, four of us walked up along the Cam- 
bridge Turnpike, and this walk and the follow- 
ing talk I reported, a few days later, in writing 
]Miss Walker, then at Keene, New Hampshire, 
who w^as as ardent an Emersonian and Platonist 
as myself. It was on a Saturday, and the record 
runs thus: — 

[34] 



EMERSON 

"At half-past nine in the morning we started 
from the Colleges to walk up. It was hot at first, 
and we went with coats and cravats off until we 
got within two or three miles of the house of 
'The Sage,' as Frank Barlow, who once lived in 
Concord, calls INlr. Emerson. We walked fast, 
through a beautiful country (Cambridge and I^ex- 
ington mostly), on a lonely road, passing near the 
birthplace of Theodore Parker, and beguiling the 
way with talk. The distance is thirteen miles, and 
we were four hours on the road. By one o'clock 
our stomachs began to hint of dinner, and, as we 
had not been thoughtful enough to bring any 
luncheon, and there were no taverns since stage- 
coaches ceased to run there, we fell to asking for 
food at the farm-houses in Concord. Three times 
we were refused; but at last, within sight of the 
Emerson house, we came to an Irishman's cot- 
tage, which had been the home of Ellery Chan- 
ning ten years before, where the woman of the 
house was busy painting her kitchen with her own 
hands. We wished to be able to say, when ques- 
tioned by Mr. Emerson, that we had dined; and 

[35 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
as this was our last opportunity, we urged our re- 
quest there; and, though it was at great incon- 
venience to herself, the good woman (Mrs. Shan- 
non) gave us a meal of bread and butter and milk, 
— the milk, she told us, from the Emerson cows. 
We ate heartily with young appetites, while she 
was lamenting she had no better fare to offer. 
' I 'm shure, boys, it is dreadful that I am so all in 
a mess here, with the paintin', — and you been 
walkin' so far,' said she with the kindest of smiles. 
We told her it was all we needed, — tliat we were 
going on to JMr. Emerson's, a neighbor of hers. 
'Ah yes! and the best neighbor I ever had he is 
too,' — and went on to praise him in good earnest. 
Hawthorne she remembered, two or three years 
back, when he lived at the Wayside ; but she did 
not speak so highly of him. Coming away, we of- 
fered to pay her, but she refused, and when we 
were going to give it to her little boy, he also re- 
fused the money. We left it on the table ; where- 
upon the lad said with as much dignity as an earl 
could show, ' Mother, the gentleman has left some 
money on our table, — I 'm sure I don't know what 
it's for.' [ 36 ] 



EMERSON 
"13y two o'clock we got to Mr. Emerson's — 
past the hour set for the conversation, — and it 
began at once, Emerson being fond of punctual- 
ity. At first it was about Cambridge and Harvard 
College and the choice of a profession : Could lit- 
erature be a young man's occupation? Mr. Emer- 
son said: 'It has formerly been the opinion that 
literature by itself will not pay ; but it seems now 
that this omnivorous passion for lectures, review 
articles, and other things within the capacity of 
scholars, has at last made it easy for a man in Eng- 
land or America to be a scholar and nothing else, 
— as Thomas Carlyle is. All men of power and 
originality make their own profession nowadays, — 
for example, Theodore Parker, Mr. Alcott, here, 
Charles Brace, with his practical philanthropy, 
and even Albert Brisbane of New York, who be- 
lieves in stellar duties, and introduced Fourierism 
into this country, after aiding Doctor Howe to 
be released from his Prussian prison twenty years 
ago. He told me once that he had the good for- 
tune to silence Carlyle, — a great thing, if it were 
true, — but Carlyle may have been only bored by 

[37 J 



Tin: ri:iis()N A LIT V of 

our countryman, wlio is ji sjid button-holder. The 
railwjiy train is the phiee to talk witli lirishane, 
wliere time is h)ni»-, and at your own disposal.' 
Then we talked of tlie Cambridge ])rofessors, — 
of Lonofellow and his destined successor, .1. 11. 
Lowell, who had become acquainted with Knier- 
son when he was 'rusticated' from the class of 
1838, and studied in Concord with Reverend Mr. 
Frost, the parish minister, — and of the Harvard 
system of instruction and restriction. Emerson 
thinks rhetoric is now too nuich neglected there ; it 
was better taught under Professor Edward C ban- 
ning, who trained a whole generation to be good 
writers, and sometimes good speakers, — such as 
Wendell IMiillips. Something led the talk toward 
Shakespeare, and then it became more deeply in- 
teresting to me. 1 spoke of the deep mystery of 
Shakespeare's genius, — so much poetry and phi- 
losophy and dramatic power, in one of whose life 
and training we know so little, — cpioting some of 
the sayings of Emerson in licp?rscntafive Men. 
Some one brought out the curious fact that, 
though he uses the language of Christianity a few 

[38] 



EMERSON 
times, as in Measure for Measure and Henry IV, 
there is so little Christianity in him you would 
hardly guess from his plays and poems that he 
lived among Christians, — and his dear friend Mar- 
lowe was denounced in his short life as an athe- 
ist. Emerson said 'Shakespeare was a pagan in 
the best sense of that word'; and quoted Jones 
Very (the religious devotee, who wrote a remark- 
able essay on Hamlet) as saying, ' If I can move 
Shakespeare I can move the world, — and already 
I begin to see him shake a little.' 

"Mr. Alcott, who was visiting Emerson, his 
home now being in Boston, had sat in silence all 
this time; but now Mr. Emerson asked his view 
of Shakespeare's religion. Mr. Alcott began with 
a Socratic question, — 'Is not the reason why we 
of this day see no religion in him, because he was 
the only religious man whom the Anglo-Saxon 
race (not much addicted to religion) has yet pro- 
duced among its writers ? Many others have had 
an alien religion, — have ingrafted the Hebrew 
religion upon themselves, as our Puritans did, — 
wherefore .Jewry yet leads us in chains. But in 

[39 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
Slmkespeare Jewry has no share; his rcHgion is 
of the blood and the race, and so will only be un- 
derstood by such as are fine enough to appreci- 
ate him in this matter.' 

"This was a thought wholly new to us all, es- 
pecially to three or four students of divinity from 
the Hall where Emerson in 1838 gave his Divin- 
ity School Address. Mr. Alcott went on to expand 
his idea, — that to each race tliere is a religion 
given, peculiarly its own, and modified by its tem- 
perament and experiences, as M^as the Hebrew 
fjiith. But these race-religions are the same in 
their great essentials, and we of the Anglo-Saxon 
race are now waiting for ours. Emerson followed 
this thought up by saying: 'When we shall have 
got what every man nowadays is seeking, — a Bi- 
ble which can unite the faiths of all mankind, — 
Shakespeare's sayings will have a large place in 
it. The ethics of Shakespeare are vast and rich.' 

"This led naturally to some talk on pulpit 
preachers. Emerson said, 'In Great Britain I 
heard no preaching to compare w^ith ours in 
America; they have no man there like our Chan- 

[40] 



EMERSON 
ning, who was the king of preachers.' He did not 
hear Chalmers, the great Scotch preacher, when 
he was in Edinburgh in 1847-48; but had heard 
Carlyle's early friend, Edward Irving, and posi- 
tively disliked him. Again we talked of poets and 
other authors, — of Beaumont and Fletcher, the 
English metaphysicians, and of Charles Kings- 
ley and his novels, chiefly Hypatia. JNIr. Alcott 
introduced that topic ; but it seems Mr. Emerson 
does not admire Kingsley, though he has not read 
him much. His reading in novels is not extensive, 
and he does not always read what Hawthorne 
writes. Of poesy he said, ' We do not expect poets 
to come from culture; they come from Heaven,' 
and he proceeded to inquire whom we have seen 
in college, thus sent." 

Our party on this occasion, from Cambridge, 
was ten in number, of whom, after fifty years, 
only three or four survive: Mr. B. S. Toyman of 
Philadelphia, Mr. .lames Hosmer, the well-known 
author, now of Minneapolis, myself, and another 
whose name escapes me. The latest to die was 
my dear friend, Edwin JNIorton, of Plymouth, a 

[41 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
townsman of Mrs. Emerson, a musician and poet, 
who spent his hist quarter-century in Switzerhuid, 
and died at JNIorges on Lake Geneva in 1900. 
When Emerson asked tliat searching question 
about college poets, INIorton was friendly enough 
privately to name me as one ; whereupon Emer- 
son expressed a wish to see some of my verses, 
with which JMorton supplied him. They had been 
written at Exeter, two or three years before, and 
printed in a New Hampshire newspaper, — for 
which I occasionally wrote, from the age of eigh- 
teen, — except one poem called Patience, which a 
partial friend had caused to be printed in a Bos- 
ton journal. He had seen these before this May 
party, and was good enough to speak kindly of 
those he had seen, and to request me to send him 
others. He praised an invective appeal to Daniel 
Webster, urging him to atone for his apostasy 
on the slavery question of March 7, 1850, which 
must have been written that year, before I was 
nineteen. It was in the iambic measure of Pope 
and Dryden, and was praised by Emerson — for 
what, I do not now recall. Another was in praise 

[42] 



EMERSON 
of Kossuth, when visiting New England, and was 
written a year or two later, perhaps about the 
time Emerson was welcoming the Hungarian 
leader in April, 1852, to the first battle-ground 
of the Revolution — an address now but little 
known, in which Emerson said: — 

"The people of Concord share with their coun- 
trymen the admiration of valor and perseverance ; 
they, like their compatriots, have been hungry to 
see the man whose extraordinary eloquence is sec- 
onded by the splendor and solidity of his actions. 
But, as it is the privilege of this town to keep a 
hallowed mound which has a place in the story of 
the country; as Concord is one of the monuments 
of freedom ; we knew beforehand that you could 
not go by us. You could not take all your steps 
in the pilgrimage of American liberty, until you 
had seen with your eyes the ruins of the bridge 
where a handful of brave farmers opened our 
Revolution. Therefore we sat and waited for you. 
We think that the graves of heroes around us 
throb to-day with a footstep that sounded like 
their own: — 

[43] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 

'The mighty tread 
Brings from the dust the sound of Liberty.' 

Far be it from us, Sir, any tone of patronage ; we 
ought rather to ask yours. You, the foremost sol- 
dier of freedom in this age — it is for us to crave 
your judgment. Who are we that we should dic- 
tate to you ? You have won your own. We only 
affirm it. You have earned your own nobility at 
home. We admit you ad eundem, as they say 
at college. We admit you to the same degree, 
without new trial. You may well sit a doctor in 
the college of I^iberty. You have achieved your 
right to interpret our Washington. And I speak 
the sense not only of every generous American, 
but the law of mind, when I say that it is not 
those who live idly in the city called after his 
name, but those who, all over the world, think 
and act like him, who can claim to explain the 
sentiment of Washington. 

"We are afraid that you are growing popular, 
Sir; you may be called to the dangers of pros- 
perity. Hitherto you have had in all countries 
and in all parties only the men of heart. I do not 

[ 44 ] 



EMERSON 
know but you will have the million yet. But 
remember that everything great and excellent 
in the world is in minorities. Whatever obstruc- 
tion from selfishness, indifference, or from prop- 
erty (which always sympathizes with possession) 
you may encounter, we congratulate you that 
you have known how to convert calamities into 
powers, exile into a campaign, present defeat into 
lasting victory." 

My verses, in their small youthful way, ex- 
pressed the same sentiment as this master of elo- 
quence did soon after; and they had his approval 
for that, if not for their form. On the Patience 
he made this single criticism; it began 

In the high Heaven, home of endless glee. 
Sits a bright angel at the Father's knee ; 

upon which touch of affectation he said, "Your 
use of 'glee' and 'knee' in the beginning was 
hardly like Michel Angelo." He remembered 
enough of my versification two years after to ask 
me to write for the dedication of Sleepy Hollow 
Cemetery "an ode that can be sung," and I com- 
plied. Twenty years later, in 1875, he printed in 

[45 J 



rilE PERSONAL irV OF 
his Pcifvianftiis tins ode, and luy liiver Song, to- 
gether with two sonnets describing his daughter 
Ellen, and taking t'or their text Emerson's own 
sentence, addressed. I have heard, to Carohne 
Sturgis amid lier snitoi-s, — "O Maiden! come into 
port bravely, or sail with God the seas." As my 
verses described with some tidelity a remarkable 
character anuMig maidens of the yeai-s before our 
Civil War. 1 may be pardoned for quoting them. 
The only title 1 gave them, when sending them 
to Emerson, being Anathcniata (Offerings at a 
Shrine), he asked me when about to print them 
in his collection, what meaning I attached to the 
Greek word, and I gave that above. 

I 

With jop uuknowu, with sadness unooiifessed. 

The generous heart accepts the passing year. 
Finds duties dear, and labor sweet as rest. 

And for itself knows neither care nor fear. 
Fresh as the morning, earnest as the hour 

That calls the noisy world to grateful sleep. 
Our silent thought reveres the nameless Power 

That high sei'lusion round thy life doth keep : 
So, feigned the poets, did Diana love 

To smile upon her darlings as they slept ; 

[ ^n 



EMERSON 

Serene, untoucliod, and walking far above 

The narrow ways wherein the many crept, 
Alontj her hinely path of luminous air 
She glided, of her beauty unaware. 

II 
Yet if they said she heeded not the hymn 

Of shepherds gazing heavenward from the moor. 
Or homeward sailors, when the waters dim 

Flashed with long splendors, widening toward the shore ; 
Nor wondering eyes of children cared to see; 

Or glowing face of happy lover upturned. 
As late he wended from the trysting-tree, 

Lit by the kiiully lamp in heaven that burned ; 
And heard unmoved the prayer of wakeful pain, 

Or consecrated maiden's holy vow, — 
Believe them not ! they sing the song in vain ; 

For so it never was, and is not now. 
Her heart was gentle as her face was fair, 
With grace and love and pity cloistered there. 

IJut to return to our May piuty (May 20, 1854). 
At the close of our formal conversation, tea was 
served by Mrs. Emerson, after which six of the 
party were taken by that lady to her "pleached 
garden," where she showed her blossoming flowers, 
and gave us bouquets of them. Near by we saw 
the famous Summer House built by Bronson Al- 
cott while Emerson was abroad in 1847-48, then 

[ 47] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
in good condition, with its harp-adorned gable, 
and its upper room, to which you mounted by a 
rustic stairway, winding round the west end, in- 
side; and which stood for perhaps ten years after 
our visit, and was sketched by JNIiss Sarah Clarke, 
Allston's one pupil, from the interior. It was a 
picturesque addition to the orchard and garden. 
Delaying too long in this delightful spot, we 
lost our train on the Fitchburg railroad, and, be- 
ing unable to find a carriage to take us to the 
College that evening, the six of us separated, — 
Morton and Lyman waiting for a later train, 
while Barlow, Barker, Carroll, and I walked 
home down what is now Massachusetts Avenue, 
leaving Barker, a divinity student (afterwards 
an army chaplain), at East Lexington, where his 
friend Clarke (a pupil of mine in Greek) was to 
preach the next day in Doctor FoUen's church, 
and reaching our rooms after midnight. 

I have dwelt at some length on this golden 
day in our college year, because it illustrates so 
well the unselfish interest which Emerson took 
in the young men who found in his writings in- 

[ 48] 



EMERSON 
spiration and solace. We were in a feeble minor- 
ity, — perhaps fifty among the five hundred who 
then were registered at Cambridge as students 
of Harvard, — the medical students, of whom my 
elder brother, the late Doctor C. H. Sanborn of 
New Hampshire, was then one, being lodged and 
taught in Boston exclusively. We could therefore 
cordially agree wdth Emerson's dictum to Kos- 
suth, — that "everything great and excellent in the 
world is in minorities." Among us for a time was 
that Oxford scholar, Matthew Arnold's "Thyrsis," 
who had come to New England for rehef from 
the distresses and conformities of England, and 
was editing Plutarch and teaching a few pupils 
advanced Greek — among them Professor Good- 
win, now the veteran Greek scholar of America. 
Arthur Clough had a second home at Emerson's 
house in Concord, but I only met him in Cam- 
bridge. Immediately after this Concord conver- 
sation came the excitement in Boston over the 
arrest of the fugitive slave Anthony Burns, and 
I was present at the great meeting in Faneuil 
Hall, where an unorganized attempt was made 

[49 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 

to rescue Burns from the Court House near the 
City Hall, where he was confined under guard. 
Not being informed of the plan of rescue, I had 
placed myself so near the platform in the hall 
that it was impossible to get through the crowd 
to the door, and thence to Court Square, until 
the unsuccessful attack had been made and foiled, 
with one fatal wound, — that given by one of the 
rescuers with a sword-cane, unsheathed, to Bach- 
elder, one of the slave's guard. As I finally got 
to the Court House and ran up the steps, there 
stood Mr. Alcott, calm and brave, his cane under 
his arm, ready to make another attack, if needful. 
It was the first time I had seen him since our 
philosophic seance in Emerson's drawing-room 
and study, a week before. Pressing personal duty 
took me the next day to Keene, whence I wrote 
to Emerson, May 31, to express our gratitude for 
his courtesies, but beginning with an acknowl- 
edgment of our mortification at being seen by 
his family on our walk back to Cambridge at 
sunset. 

"We were sorry the other night to expose our 
[50 ] 



EMERSON 

ill-fortune to you by passing your house on our 
way to Lexington ; but there was no other way ; 
it turned out, however, to be good fortune — or 
I thought it so. At any rate, we could afford to 
pay that price for our afternoon's enjoyment, 
which we agreed was incomparable. The whole 
day w^as to me one of the greatest delight. We 
would be glad to return your hospitality by invit- 
ing you to Cambridge, to meet there a roomful 
of young men, and pass the afternoon with us. 
Would such an arrangement be agreeable to you, 
at any time during this term ? 1 think you told 
me last year that there was an inconvenience in 
it, which may still be the case. I write this from 
among the Cheshire hills, not far from your Mo- 
nadnoc, which I climbed our eastern hill this 
morning to see. Coming here from the conten- 
tion and noise of Boston, it seems like stepping 
into a church — so still and cool is it here." 

It must have been in response to this request, 
in which Moncure Conway of Virginia, then about 
graduating from the Divinity School, cordially 
joined, that Emerson did visit Divinity Hall in 

[ 51 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
June, and read to a score of us in Conway's room 
his lecture on Poeti'y, which was not printed till 
many years later. It was a distinguished audience 
of our elder friends; for Arthur Clough came, 
shortly before his return to England, Longfellow 
and his wife were there, and Charles Lowell came 
with his mother, IVIrs. Anna Lowell; and proba- 
bly Charles Norton and A\^illiam Goodwin were 
there, if in America, though I do not recall them. 
In the conversation which followed the reading, 
Clough took no marked part; he was extremely 
modest, even shy. 

Many sad events for me followed these happy 
days of May and June: I was called away to 
Peterboro, New Hampshire, by the increasing ill- 
ness of JNIiss Walker, to whom I was engaged ; and 
this only terminated with her death in August. 
We were married upon her death-bed, and I re- 
mained with her aged and lonely fjither for a 
month or two, and did not return to college until 
October. I was invited to Concord by Emerson 
in November (the twenty-first), 1854, and took 
my first long walk with him through his Walden 

[52] 



EMERSON 

woodlands, on both sides of the pond — meeting, 
on our way thither, Thomas Cholmondeley, an- 
other Oxford scholar, who had followed Clough's 
example, though for different reasons, and come 
to spend some months in New England. He was 
from New Zealand not long Ijcfore, whither he 
had gone to aid in the colonizing career of a rela- 
tive, had raised sheep there, and written a book 
about the island — Ultima Thule by name. Emer- 
son introduced him to Thoreau, at whose father's 
house Cholmondeley lived while in Concord, and 
where he afterwards visited in 1858-59, during 
the last illness of John Thoreau. 

Emerson, who had dined alone that Novem- 
ber day, was just returned from a lecture in New 
Hampshire ; it being his habit then, and for more 
than twenty years after, to give a good part of 
tiie autumn and winter months to lecturing in 
New England, New York, Canada, and the Mid- 
land States, — then called "the West," — Ohio, 
Michigan, Illinois, and finally Wisconsin, Iowa, 
and Missouri — going only at intervals to New 
Jersey, Pennsylvania, and at last to Washington 

[53] 



THE PERSON A LIT V OF 

and Viroinia, tVoni ^vhic'h bis pronounced anti- 
slavery opinions had long excluded him. In these 
tours he was often absent from Concinxl weeks or 
nuMiths, and encountered many interesting per- 
sons. This particular day he told me of an Illinois 
theorist, l^assnett by name, whom he had met, 
and whose book. Outlines of a JIt'c//a/iicaI IVicori/ 
of Stor//is, Emerson lent me. It pro\ ed to be 
totally at variance with the Newtonian system of 
gravitation, and, though readable from its start- 
ling theses, very slenderly supported by the facts 
of nature. It attached much importance to lunar 
intluences, exerted, as Hassnett held, by means 
of "a vorticose motion in the luminiferous ether." 
which he took to be the same thing, under an- 
other name, as the electric fluid. Emerson did 
not accept his conclusions, but found the author 
entertaining, as he often thought those who break 
a new path in science, away from the beaten 
track of the professional scientist, w hom he was 
apt to criticise humorously — as in that first chap- 
ter of what was to hiwc been his great work on 
T/w \atural Ilistori/ of Intellect. The page was 

[54] 



EMERSON 
written, I suppose, before my acquaintance with 
him began, j^erhaps suggested by the controver- 
sies in which his brother-in-law, Doctor Charles 
T. Jackson, the famous Boston chemist and early 
geologist, found himself involved from time to 
time. Emerson there said: — 

"Go into the scientific club and hearken. Each 
savant proves in his admirable discourse that he, 
and he only, knows now or ever did know any- 
thing on the subject. 'Does the gentleman speak 
of Anatomy? Who peeped into a box at the 
Custom House and then published a drawing of 
///// rat?' Poor Nature and the sublime law are 
quite omitted in this triumphant vindication. 
Was it better when we came to the philosophers 
who found everybody wrong? acute and ingenious 
themselves to lampoon and degrade mankind." 

Emerson, in all my conversations with him, as 
in his published writings, did not, as Harvey 
scoffingly said of Bacon, "talk of science like a 
Lord Chancellor"; but held himself modestly a 
listener at the shrine of Nature's oracles, and re- 
ported faithfully, without ostentation or parade, 

[55 ] 



Tu 1" r r KSON Ai 1 r \ or 

\vh:it she said in his hcariui;-. Ahvcui) . boUno anil 
sin».*o his iloath. t'oivniost tliinkoi-s in soioni'o and 
philosi>phv have t'onnd thiansclxos antioipatc.\l by 
tliis subtile intelhi^-enee. nuisiUi;- in the woods et' 
Coneord;and httle that is obsolete or obsoleseent 
a}^pears in the bright eirele ot' his intelloetual il- 
hnnination. Ambitious systems. Tositixe. Cosmie. 
Tsvehieah etc.. arise and \ aunt themselves tor a 
time, onlv to be laid aside in a lew yeais; while 
the vital, spiritual philosophy ot" lanei>on gathers 
streui^th bv "veai-s that brin^- the philosophio 
nnnd" to those who ha\e been the slaves ot' sys- 
ten\ and a dead-and-ali\ e loi^ie. "Let the stu- 
dent." he s;ivs somewhere, "learn to appreeiato 
this uuniele ot' the mind. He shall eome to kr.ow 
that in seein^;-. and in no tradition, he nuist tind 
what truth is: shall eome to trust it entiix^ly. — 
to elea\ e to Ciod a^-'dnst the name ot" tiod. When 
he has i">nee known the oraele he will need no 
priest: He l'ron\ whose hand it ean\e will ouido 
and diivet it." 

On the Saturd;iy at'ter this c'oneord walk ^No- 
\ ember "Jo. ISoT. 1 dnu\l with the Aleotts at 

I .M? 1 



KM K USON 
their riiu'kiuT Shitt, Hostoii, lioiisc, niul the 
host, in liis sliulv Mflerw.nds, ojnc \\\c this ac- 
coiint of Imjumsoms method ol" writiiii;', whieh 
was n'tMierallv, hut not ahsojiitely, true: 

*' 1 le puts (lowu in liis eouiniou-plaee hooU lrt)ni 
(lay to (lay, as 1 do in my .lournal, whatever he 
thinks worlhv: and wIumi preparini;" his lectures, 
or writing' or editiiii;" his hook, he i^oes oxer these 
diaries, notices what topic has heen upj)erniosl in 
his thoui^hl (or the time covered hy the writin«;\ 
and arran^'cs his passages with reference to that. 
Does this not jieeount for the want ot" Ibrnial 
method in his works? They are erystalli/ations of 
earlier material. We hold that a theolooy infused 
into your mind, as in Kmerson's hooks, is better 
than one more directly taught. The best men, 
when they ti>ach theology directly, are wont to 
get harsh and narrow; the indirect way is the 
best." 

Hut in his style. a})art from the sul)tler mean- 
ings, Kmerson was direct enough, and did not 
tolerate in others what he avoided for liiniself. 
^Vt this same date. Mr. Alcott showed me tbe 

[ 57 1 



THE ri. KS()N Ai.rrv of 

letter of Emerson, written more than a tlo/en 
veal's betore. eritieisinLj" sineerely the hm^'nage of 
his friend in that mystieal reN erie ot' his wliieh 
he ealled l\iH'^t\ bnt >vl\ieh he never printed: — 
••I think it possesses, in eertain passages, the 
rare power to awaken the liigliest faenlties. — to 
waken the apprehension of the Absohite. It is al- 
most nniformly eleijant. and eontains many beau- 
tiful and some splendid pag-es. Its fault arises 
out of the subtlety and extent oi' its siibjeet; it 
o-rapples with an Idea whieh it does not subdue 
and present in just methoil before us. The book 
has a strouij mannerism. But its eapital fault is a 
want ot' eompression,^ — 1\ fault almost unavoid- 
able in treating sueh a subjeet, whii'h not be- 
ing easily apprehensible by the human faeulties. 
we are tempted to linger round the Idea, in the 
hope that what eannot be sharply stated in a 
few words, may yet ehanee to be suggested by 
many. . . . Tiie prophet should speak a elear dis- 
course, straight home to the eonseienee; but your 
page is often a series of touches. You play with 
the thought, — never strip olV your coat, and dig 

i --^ ] 



EMERSON 

mul strain, and drive into the lieart of the matter. 
See what a style yours is to balk and disappoint 
expectation! To use a coarse word, 't is all stir and 
no go. U" there's a good thing, say it out! there 
are so few in the world, we can't wait a minute. 
'Gaberdine' we have had before; say 'frock.' 
'Lunch' is vulgar, and reminds one of the Bite 
Tavern" (in Boston). 

"If there is one thing more than another," said 
Alcott once, "that we should pray for, it is the 
boon of a severely candid friend." Such did he 
and others find in Emerson; as those who knew 
him most intimately would all witness. And his 
censures were so friendly that, where criticism of 
writings w^as concerned, he was entitled to the 
praise Pope gave to the fair Belinda: — 

"Who oft rejects, hut never once offends." 

A week after this visit to the Alcotts, I met with 
Emerson, Alcott, Cholmondeley, John Dwight, 
the musical a])])reciator, George Calvert, who 
had lived in Germany with William Emerson, 
and others, at an Albion dinner in Boston, and 

[ 59 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
the conversation turned on literary matters and 
authors. Emerson was in full force, and praised 
and blamed with equal sincerity. He urged JNIr. 
Dwight to print, as a publishing venture, the 
then new^ novel of Christie Johnstone by Charles 
Reade; it ought to be printed in Boston, for it 
was much better than Jane EyiT. It was soon 
after published by Mr. Fields, of the fu-m of 
Tick nor. George Bancroft, whose son John had 
lately graduated at Harvard, his father's col- 
lege, was mentioned, in connection with an ad- 
dress he had recently given in New York, in 
which he lauded Calvinism, and larded his page 
with phrases like "Arrogant Arius," "Devout 
Athanasius," and the "Triune God" — Bancroft 
being a Unitarian, if anything, in religion. Emer- 
son, who had first met Bancroft as a Senior in 
Harvard, in 1818, and who had known him w^ell 
almost ever since, told us: — 

"]Mr. Bancroft is hardly a religious man: his 
Trinitarianism w^as perhaps assumed out of def- 
erence to the sentiment of New York, where he 
now lives, and which is mainly Presbyterian and 

[ 60 ] 



EMERSON 
Episcopalian. In conversation he will take any 
side, and defend it skilfully ; he is a soldier of for- 
tune, as we see by his political connection. His 
profession of Jacksonian democracy in Boston, 
where he was ostracized for it, was rewarded by 
appointment to office; but Boston should have 
been more tolerant of political differences. As 
American minister in London he was a credit to 
our country; and his speech some years earlier, 
at a Phi Beta dinner in Cambridge, where Lord 
Ashburton, who negotiated with Webster the 
Maine Boundary treaty, was feted, was the best 
of the oratory on that occasion. The elder Quincy 
and Judge Story had spoken, but rather coldly 
and stiffly; but Bancroft warmed up the audi- 
ence. Edward Everett was not present, having 
preceded Bancroft, under Tyler's presidency, as 
minister to Saint James's." 

Soon after Mr. Alcott came into the Albion 
dining-room, he being the oldest person present, 
though only fifty-five at that time, our conversa- 
tion turned on old age; and Mr. D wight said he 
could not understand why, in this earthly course 

[61 ] 



'rill- rr KSc>N A 1 I r Y ov 

i>t" ours, voiith must bo Ictt bcliiud, •'Tluit is. in- 
deed, ineoniprchousiblo :uul sad." said Knicrson; 
"this man here" ^turnin^' toward AK'ott"» •"used 
to assure us, Nvhat e\ crv days expcricneo is dis- 
proN in^-, that the beauty ot" youth turned in- 
ward." *• I have the triek." lie added. "o( behe\ ino- 
every man I talk with. wliate\er his a^e. to be at 
least as old as myselt": so 1 warn you all. yinmi;- 
men," The point then in question was the ai^e ot' 
Cliarlos Sunmer. who had sueeeeded Daniel \\'eb- 
ster in the Senate at \\'ashinnton. As we lett the 
Albion, I walked with Aleott and C'hi^lmondeley 
to the boc^kstore ot'. lames Munroe on \\'ashinL;'- 
ton Street, who had been Kuierson's publisher tor 
some years, and who had published Kllery Cdum- 
nings tirst \ olumes ot' poems, w hieh C'hcilmonde- 
lev. w ho had met C'hanniuL;' at C\Mieord. wished to 
purehase and take baek to Shn^pshire with him, 
Munroe himselt'was at the shop, and, bein^- ipies- 
tioned. told us that three-t'ourths of all Ameri- 
ean poetry was then published at the poets ex- 
pense. 'Phis was trueot' Kmerson's \olume<.>t' 1S17, 
and Channing\ poems ot' the same year; his tirst 

I &-^ 1 



KMKRSON 

voliiint', issued l)y Mtiuroc in lSi.*{, wiis paid for 
by ClKiniiing's IVicrKl, S. (i. Ward. It seems that 
the eiistom of poetry-printiiif^ has not iiiueh va- 
ried since 18.54; in spite of the popular success of 
Longfellow, Holmes, and Whitticr, and finally of 
Lowell and VVhitcomb lliley. 

l)eeeml)er 1*J, 1854, Mr. Aleott eame out to 
our College to call on Morion and myself, and we 
went together to Morion's room in Massachusetts 
JIall, where we found him writing his paper on 
Thoreau, which I printed for him in the llarvard 
Magazine for January. This led Aleott to talk of 
Thoreau: — 

"It is a pity that he and Emerson live in the 
same age; l)oth are original, but they borrow from 
each other, being so near in time and space. Rich- 
ard Dana says he has not read Thoreau, but al- 
ways supposed him to be a man of abstractions. 
On the contrary, your old Librarian in the Col- 
lege, Doctor Harris, told me with a groan, 'If 
Emerson had not spoiled him, Thoreau would 
have made a good entomologist.'" 

This same month of December, in my Senior 
[63] 



Tin: rKKSONALITV OF 
college year, proved to be tuU of serious events 
in niv youthful life. Toward the end of it my 
father-in-law. worn down with aoe and sorrow, 
felt his death approaching, and I was sent for 
to be with him in the last hours. On my way 
thither (to Peterboro in New Hampshire) I passed 
through l>oston and bade farewell to our friend 
Cholmondeley, who hastily decided to go home 
and raise a company of volunteers for the Crimean 
War — as he did. And it was in this month that 
Emei*son formed the purpose of inviting me to 
take charge of a small school in Concord, mainly 
devoted to his children and those of Judge Hoar 
and his neighbors, in a schoolhouse built by the 
Judge, and not far from his fathers house — Hon- 
orable Samuel Hoars, who had married a daugh- 
ter of Roger Sherman, and Avas, in my time, that 
Dantesque figure in the village streets which none 
could see without respect. At his death, in No- 
vember, 185(), Emerson wrote his eidogy, and 
adorned it with a quatrain of his verse, which I 
have in its first form — perhaps not inferior to 
that which the poet afterwards printed: — 

[ G^ ] 



EMERSON 

"W'itli beams tliat stars at (liristiuas dart 
His cold eyes truth and conduct scanned; 
July was in his sunny heart, 
October in his liberal hand." 

Here the allusion to Christmas suggests the old- 
fashioned religion of this aged Christian, a true 
follower of Emerson's grandfather, Parson Ripley. 
It was after one of his lectures in East Boston, 
but whether in December or January I am not 
certain, that Emerson proposed to me this task, 
or rather privilege, of educating his children and 
their playmates. I had gone with a few of my 
classmates, among whom I remember AVillard 
Bliss, now of Rosemond, Illinois, to hear him read 
one chapter in his forthcoming English Ti^aits to 
a small audience in that island ward of Boston. 
At the close, as we came forward to express our 
pleasure at the reading, he said to me, after a few 
words to my comrades, "Will you get into my 
carriage, and let me take you to the American 
House in Hanover Street, where I pass the night?" 
I accepted the fjivor, and, while we crossed the 
East Boston ferry, he unfolded to me the plan he 

[65] 



riiv: rKusoNAi.rrv of 

had tonncd. I ^vas to Livt lea\o of absciu'o tVom 
college, and open the little school in March: its 
duties would not keep me tVoni pursuing- the Se- 
nior studies in tlieir last three months, and 1 ^vas 
then to continue the school atter graduation, if 
nuitually satisfactory. The salary otfered. though 
not large, was ample for my single needs, and 
niig"ht be increascil if the school grew in numbers, 
as he was kind enough to say it would, under my 
direction. I was to ha\ e a mouth or six weeks to 
make my decision and arrangements; and when 
I found that my kinsman by marriage. President 
Walker, then at the head of the College, would 
let my studies go on at C\>nccM-d. I lost no time in 
deciding to take the place otVered. Karly in March. 
IS.'n). 1 visited the village, to call on the families 
o{ my expected pu}Mls. and to secure rooms for 
mvself and mv sister, who. 1 stipulated, should 
be mv assistant, at my own expense. Kmerson 
escorted me on these visits; and when I asked him 
where 1 cmdd tind rooms, he said. "Mr. Fdlery 
Channing has a large old house, with no inmates 
but himself and his housekeeper; we will go and 

[ ()l> ] 



KMKKSON 
see if he will take you in." We went to the house, 
opposite the residenee of the Thorenu fumily; 
knoeked, and were answered by Mr, Clianning in 
person, wearing tlie oldest dressing-gown I had 
seen up to that tinie (I have sinee seen liini come 
down to tea in an older one in my own liouse), 
who reeeived us courteously, and was willing to 
lease nie three furnished rooms, and to allow the 
service of his housekeeper, who was rather his 
tenant than his servant. That point settled, and 
the terms agreed on, I returned to take tea with 
the Emersons, and a week later began my school 
with seventeen pupils, girls and boys together 
(always the Concord custom), three of whom were 
Emerson's own children. 

Having no previous experience with a school, 
though 1 had taught Latin and Greek pupils pri- 
vately, much margin and courtesy must be al- 
lowed for my mistakes; but I received from all 
the families the kindest consideration, and was at 
home in the village and the woods from the first. 
One of our earliest callers was Henry Thoreau, 
whom I had met at Emerson's ; a!id with his close 

I iu 1 



riiF, ri: K SON A I irv ov 

tVicnd. Chiuumvj:. 1 be^'aiuo vorv intimate. 1 was 
soon introdiKwi at the Old Manso. then occupied 
by that gentle seliohn- and excellent housekeeper 
Mrs. Sarah Kiplev. the a\ idow of Ixeverend Sam- 
uel Kipley. Kmerson'> halt-unele. and her daugh- 
ters, all a^Teeable ladies, of nuieh culture. From 
that acquaintance to Meekly Cu-eek reading's with 
Mrs. Kipley was but an easy step, and thus my 
interest in that lan^uao-e was kept up. Mv colle^v 
studies came out well; indeed, though 1 valued 
class-rank but little. 1 believe my ••marks" were 
higher, from infrequent examinations, than if I 
had been at the daily recitations: and 1 graduated 
seventh in a class ot' eighty. 

This is a good place to pause and speak o1i the 
scholarship o\^ Emerson and his Concord triends. 
He entered Harvard at the age of fourteen, and 
graduated at eighteen, in ISiM. In those days, and 
with his slender constitution, this did not im- 
ply much reading either in Latin or Cireek. and 
French was then but little taught. In his own 
school-keeping, for a tew years atter graiiuation. 
and in his theological studies. Emerson extended 

[ (>^^ ] 



E INI 1<: K S N 
his use of Latin, and acquired both ehissic and 
New Testament Greek so as to read it with httle 
difficulty; but his famiharity with the language 
was never so great as IMrs, Kipley's, or (I fancy) 
JMiss Hoar's, mIio had been better taught and 
more diligent in reading the originals. 15ut from 
the Attic cast of his genius, Emerson entered into 
the spirit of Greek thought and literature more 
profoimdly than many better-equipped technical 
scholars — more even than Thoreau, who was a 
thorough Greek and Latin scholar. Emerson early 
acquired French, both for reading and speak- 
ing, though not very fluent in conversation in 
French. German he learned later, for the sole pur- 
pose of reading Goethe in the original. Italian 
he read, and had some knowledge of Spanish. 
Persian and Sanscrit he never attempted; but 
made his translations from the German version 
of Oriental authors, or such English or French 
versions as were more accessible. Alcott read no 
language but his own and a little French; but 
Channing was versed in Latin, Greek, and all the 
modern tongues of Europe, though not critically 

[ 69] 



THE ri:u>oNAi.riv of 

a scholar. The same fould bo said of Margaret 
Fuller, whom I never knew. 

Emerson had at all times the habit of a selmhu-, 
but one ^vho, like \\'ordsworth. made the open 
air his library nuieh of the time. Though not so 
thorouii'h a walker and investig'ator o( nature as 
his friends. Channing" and Thoreau. who would 
spend whole days and nights in the forest or 
among the mountains, he had similar tastes, and 
in youth had mueh practised upon the scale they 
afterwards followed. \\'hen I once remarked to 
him that the passage in his U\HHhiott\^, 

'•And siu-h 1 knew, a torest-seer, 
A luinstrel ot" the natural year."' ttc. 

was generally thought to be aimed at Henry 
Thoreau, Emerson rather sharply negatived that 
notion, and told me the whole remarkable pas- 
sao'o was conceived, largely from his own experi- 
ence, and mainly written out. before he ever knew 
Thoreau, except as a promising boy. He was fa- 
miliar with the near forests of Maine and New 
Hampshire, and had early seen the forest scenery 
of the Carolinas and Florida. In later life, when 

L '0 j 



EMERSON 
I first knew him, his custom was to walk every 
day for some hours, and in tliese walks I was 
first made acquainted with several of his favorite 
haunts in Concord: the Walden woods, leaker 
Farm, Copan, and Peter's Field, leading there- 
to, Columbine llock, — one of several crags thus 
named, — and the Estabrook country. He hud 
composed nnicli of his verse in these walks in 
field and woodland, as, indeed, the verse itself 
sometimes declares; and his friends were often 
invited to join him in his excursions, or to show 
him their favorite resorts. Alcott enjoyed the 
converse thus promoted, but hardly the walk it- 
self; for Emerson told me, whenever they came to 
a farmer's fence or a convenient seat, his friend 
would halt, to continue their philosophic debate 
at rest. Alcott, at eighty-two, thus described in 
his Sonnets and Ca?izonets these early walks, forty 
years before: — 

"IMeused I recall those hours so fair and free, 
\\'heu, all the lon^ forenoons, we two did toss 
From lip to lip, in lively colloquy, 
Plato, I'lotinus, or famed Schoolman's gloss, — 
Disporting in rapt thoug-ht and ecstasy; 

[ ^1 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 

Then by tlio tiltiuir rail Millbrook wo cross. 
And s;illy through the tleUls to A\'ahlon wave. 
There phiniring in the Cove, or swimmiuir o'er. 
Tlirouirh woodpaths wendinir. lie with gesture nuiok 
Khyines dettly in mid-air with oireling stick, 
Skims the smooth pebbles from the leat'y shore. 
Or deeper ripples raises as we lave." 

These lines well picture Emerson's habit of fore- 
noons in the study and afternoons in the woods, 
together with his manner of twirling his walking- 
stick, customarily carried, and his fondness for 
swinuning in AValden, or skating there in winter. 
I have so skated with him, and have swum there 
with Alcott, when he was approaching his eigh- 
tieth birthday. The Concord authors, except Tho- 
reau, who inherited a tendency to consumption 
and had weakened his frame by outdoor hard- 
ships, were robust comrades as I knew them; for 
Emei-son, in his fii*st Atlantic voyage, to Sicily, 
in 1833, was said to have overcome his early ten- 
dency to phthisis, of which his brothers died. He 
was not expert at manual laboi*s, as Alcott, Chan- 
ninjr, and Thoreau were, and for that reason em- 
ployed them occasionjilly in such tasks: Tho- 

[72] 



EMERSON 
reau in his gardening and tree-planting, Channing 
in wood-cutting, from which experience came 
Channing's poem The Woochnan, printed in his 
Poems of Siiiiy-five Years, and Alcott in choos- 
ing crooked sticks and making a summer house 
of them, — for which quaint task, satirized by 
Channing and Thoreau in their letters to Emer- 
son in England, he was paid fifty dollars. 

Emerson's relations with Alcott are to the last- 
ing honor of both. Each saw the defect of the 
other; but Emerson, aware, as few others could 
be, of the profound originality of Alcott's mind 
and the nobility of his character, at which the 
worldly mocked, and even friendship sometimes 
wearied, never failed to stand by his friend, while 
dealing frankly with his foibles. He said to me, 
more than once, "I hope it may please the 
Powers to let me survive Alcott, and write his 
biography; for I think I can do that better than 
any one." It was not so ordered, and the task of 
biographer fell mainly to me ; for Louisa Alcott 
died but a day or two after her father. I then re- 
minded Doctor Emerson of what his father had 

[73] 



THE PERSONALITY O F 
told me of the records he had made of Alcott's 
traits and felicities, and he was good enough to 
copy out for me, from the diaries, most of the 
entries that concerned Alcott. Among them was 
this statement of the intrinsic manliness of char- 
acter which makes the attraction of some literary 
men, and which Emerson, like Carlyle, recognized 
in Doctor Johnson: — 

"The attitude is the main thing. John Brad- 
shaw, as JNlilton says, was all his Ufe a consul 
sitting in judgment on kings. Carlyle, best of 
all men in England, has kept this manly atti- 
tude in his time. His errors of opinion are as 
nothing in comparison with this merit, in my 
opinion. If I look for a counterpart in my neigh- 
borhood, Thoreau and Alcott are the best; and 
in majesty Alcott excels. This aplomb cannot be 
mimicked." 

Had Emerson looked in his mirror, he would 
have seen the face of as marked an example of 
this quality as Alcott was — yet not so majestic 
in aspect, nor so graceful in manners. Our friend 
Cholmondelcy said of Alcott, ''He has the man- 

[ ^^ ] 



EMERSON 

ners of a very great Peer' — the highest compH- 
ment an EngUsh Squire could pay. As Ben Jon- 
son said of Bacon, " In his adversity I ever prayed 
that God would give him strength, for greatness 
he could not want"; so might his friends have 
said of Bronson Alcott. Emerson stood ready to 
aid him in every available way; yet said of him, 
"With his hatred of labor and his command- 
ing contemplation, a haughty beneficiary, Alcott 
makes good to this nineteenth century Simeon 
the Stylite, the Thebais, and the first Capuchins." 
This hatred of labor was only of intellectual la- 
bor; for Alcott, like many men brought up on 
ancestral acres in New England, had a real love 
of manual toil, and often exhausted himself with 
it in his old age, when Louisa's success had made 
hand-labor needless at the Orchard House, which 
Emerson had helped him purchase. Yet there was 
a certain humorous truth, as often in Emerson's 
compliments, in another entry in the diary about 
1840, when his friend was supporting himself by 
day-labor in the Concord grain-fields: — 

"Alcott astonishes by the grandeur of his angle 
[ 75 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
of vision, and the heaps of particnhirs. I tell him 
he is the Bonaparte of speculators [speculative 
philosophers], born to rout the Austrians of the 
soul. But his day-labor has a certain emblematic 
air, like the annual plowing of the Emperor of 
Chhia." 

Ten years or more at\er my early weeks in 
Concord, I was present at a conversation of Al- 
cott's which drew from Emerson these comments 
in his diary (18(36): — 

"Last night hi the conversation Alcott ap- 
peared to great advantage, and I saw again, as 
often before, his singular superiority. As pure in- 
tellect I have never seen his equal. The people 
with whom he talks do not ever understand him. 
Thev interrupt him with clamorous dissent, or 
what they think verbal endorsement of what they 
fancy he may have been saying; or with 'Do 
you know, Mr. Alcott, I think so and so,' — some 
whim or sentimentalism : and do not know that 
they have interrupted his large and progressive 
statement; do not know that all they have in 
their baby brains is incoherent and spotty; that 

[ 'M 



EMERSON 
all he sees and says is like astronomy, lying there 
real and vast — and every part and fact in eternal 
connection with the whole; and that they ought 
to sit in silent gratitude, eager only to hear more, 
— to hear the whole, and not interrupt him with 
their prattle. His activity of mind is shoAvn in 
the perpetual invention and felicity of his lan- 
guage ; the constitutionality of his thought is ap- 
parent in the fact that last night's discourse only 
brousrht out with new conviction the fundamental 
thoughts which he had when I first knew him. 
The moral benefit of such a mind cannot be told." 
To this high conception of Alcott's character 
and intellect Emerson was faithful to the last, 
and Alcott was one of the friends to whom he 
bade a characteristic farewell on his death-bed 
in 1882. Recalled for a few moments from that 
wandering of mind which prevailed in the last 
days, he grasped Alcott's hand warmly, saying, 
*'You have a strong hold on life; be firm!" It 
was true, but the weight of years and the loss of 
his best friend weakened that hold, and it was 
but six months after Emerson's death that the 

[77] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
illness of which he died six years later fell upon 
the vitrorous frame of Alcott. 

One of the first of Emerson's volumes which I 
read in youth was that reprint of Nature, Ad- 
dresses and Lectures appearing in the summer 
of 1849, and directly followed by Represent ative 
Men later in the year. While these books were 
going through the press in Boston, Alcott had fre- 
quent colloquies with Emerson on their theories 
of "Genesis" (as Alcott styled what is now termed 
Evolution), and one of the most distinct expres- 
sions of the evolutionary theory was handed by 
Emerson to Alcott in August, 1849, — who pasted 
into his diary the remarkable verse, about to be 
used as the new motto for Nature: — 

"A subtle chain of countless rings 
Tlie next unto the farthest brings ; 
Tlie eye reads omens where it goes, 
And speaks all languages the Rose ; 
And, striving to be man, the worm 
Mounts through all the spires of form." 

How much earlier this was written is yet un- 
known ; but it was the conclusion to which Emer- 
son had been coming for a dozen years, helped by 

[78] 



EMERSON 
the discoveries and theories of Oken, Goethe, and 
Sweden borg. In 1855, when I was one day with 
Emerson in his study, he read me these Hnes, 
and asked me how I should interpret them: — 

''Caught among the blackberry vines. 
Feeding on the Ethiops sweet. 
Pleasant fancies overtook me. 
I said, 'What influence me preferred. 
Elect, to dreams thus beautiful?' 
The vines replied, 'And did'st thou deem 
No wisdom to our berries went?'" 

I hardly knew what to reply, where several mean- 
ings were possible; but said that he must have 
meant that Nature does not leave her least par- 
ticle without a lesson for Man ; that the moral of 
the delicious flavor of the low blackberry was, 
"Even so, what seems black to you in Man's des- 
tiny may have as fair an issue; as Cowper says: — 

"The bud may have a bitter taste. 
But sweet will be the flower." 

Without commenting on this, it seemed to please 
him; and I inferred it was an illustration of his 
philosophic principle: — 

"The eye reads omens where it goes." 

[79 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
It may have been this incident that determined 
me, the next year, to set my advanced class of 
girls reading Emerson's Poems of 1847, then but 
httle known, and commenting on them myself, 
by way of intei'pretation. This was, so far as I 
know, the first example of what has since become 
a frequent practice, in which my friend Charles 
Malloy of Waltham is a past master ; he being an 
older Emersonian than myself. Emerson seldom 
commented his own verses, except by way of cor- 
rection of a mistaken reading; and, like all poets, 
he did not always know which the best word Avas. 
Thus, when he read me that fine group of poems 
which, at much urgency on their part, he gave to 
the beginners of The Atlantic Monthly for their 
first number, the best of them all, Days, began : — 

"Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days;" 

and so he printed it in The Atlantic, a year after- 
wards. But when he afterwards printed it, the be- 
ginning shocked me with its 

" Damsels of Time. " 

Now "damsels" is a good word in some connec- 

[80] 



EMERSON 
tions, but not in a grave, finished Greek epigram, 
which this poem is; just as Thoreau's Smoke is, 
— graceful as INIeleager, and profound as Simoni- 
des. The better reading is now restored in the 
posthumous volume of Poems. But omissions oc- 
curred there which I cannot quite understand. 
In that strangely admirable JVoodfiotes a slight 
change is made in the lines, 

''He shall see the speeding year 
Without wailing, without fear," 

by altering "see" to "meet" — perhaps to make it 
less apparently a version (a much improved one) 
of those lines of Horace which Emerson once told 
me were the grandest of that smiling poet: — 

" Hunc solem et stellas et decedentia certis 

Temporn momentis, sunt qui,formidine nulla 

Imbuti, spectent." 

(Epistle VI. To Numicius.) 

Horace gave us the majestic Lucretian rhythm, 
and, like Dante, introduced the stars effectively ; 
but the pith of the passage is in Emerson's short 
couplet. It might be rendered without so much 
compression: — 

[81 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 

"You Sun aud Star.*, aud fatal iliijht of days, — 
Thoro are, my Friend, wlio \iow witli foarless gaze." 

But the Greeks would have shortened the expres- 
sion as Emerson did. In the same IVood notes dc- 
scrihing the same "eoniing man," 

" \\ lioin Naturo iii\'otli for dofouce 
His forniidaMo innooouoo," 

this hyperbole is omitted, perhaps wisely, where 
so much is hyperbole: — 

'•He shall never be old. 
Nor his fate shall he foretold." 

But why leave out this magical sketch of the sor- 
ceress ? 

*'The robe of silk in \vhieh she shines. 
It was woven of many sins ; 
And the shreds which she sheds 

In the wearina: of the same, 
Sliall be irrief on irrief aud shame on shame." 

There is an imperfect rhyme, to be sure, and the 
thouo'ht is incoherent — but so is the creature de- 
picted ; and like to like is good, to say nothing of 
the pleasing rhythm. 

I have mentioned hyperbole. It was Emerson's 
most familiar trope and prevailed in his speeches 

[82] 



EMERSON 
and his daily conversation. In fact, Concord might 
be styled the land of Hyperbole and Humor, — 
so abundant are they in the writings of all the 
famous authors there, except Hawthorne, who 
substituted a rhetorical vitascope. In the summer 
of 185G I was mostly engaged in visiting Middle- 
sex towns, holding meetings, and raising money 
to keep Kansas free from negro slavery. Our col- 
lege tutor in elocution, Mr. Jennison, for a Cam- 
bridge committee, arranged a meeting in I^yceum 
Hall, opposite the Colleges (September 10, 1856), 
at which Emerson consented to speak, so much 
was he concerned for our national political situa- 
tion. In his speech, which I heard, he introduced 
a passage, not set down in his notes, and which 
does not appear in the printed report. Speaking 
of the anti-slavery opinions of the founders of 
the Republic (Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, 
Madison), and the absence of such men from the 
ranks of the conspirators against liberty to-day, 
he quoted the antithesis of Tacitus, remarking on 
the absence of the busts of Brutus and Cassius 
from the funeral procession of Junia, who was 

[ 8'3 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
wife of Cassius and sister of Brutus: "Sed pree- 
fulgebant Cassius atque Brutus, eo ipso, quod 
effigies eorum non visebantur," — "Eo ipso prge- 
fulgebant," cried Emerson, "quod non visebantur! 
Yes, they glared out of their absence.'" Here was 
hyperbole again, and compression of the already 
concise Roman annalist. 

In conversation it was the same. I was taking 
tea one evening at the Emersons' before the Civ- 
il War, when Mrs. Emerson, just returned from 
Boston, where some of her friends were ardent 
Episcopalians, had been ruffled by the spiritual 
pride of some dignitary of Henry the Eighth's 
church, whose quoted remark implied there was 
no true religion anywhere in New England out- 
side of what he styled "The Church," with a 
capital C. She was telling us what her reply had 
been to the lady quoting the dictum. "And did 
you tell her, Queenie" (Emerson's domestic title 
for his wife), "that it is the church of all the 
donkeys in America?" with his most benevolent 
smile. Now he did not mean that all that class 
of our people were Anglicans, — only to satirize a 

[84] 



EMERSON 
sect which at that time had not its fair share of 
the ideas and scientific truth of the American 
people; but was still apt to think that geology 
was an atheistic attack on JNIoses and the Book 
of Genesis. 

Without being a partisan in his turn of mind, 
as the brothers Hoar of Concord were, Emerson 
was frank and direct in his advocacy of what he 
thought the national cause at any time; and this 
made him earnest in behalf of Charles Sumner 
and the exclusion of slavery from Kansas. He 
spoke warmly at the meeting in Concord Town 
Hall (where he must have read lectures or made 
speeches fifty times from 1852 till his death, thir- 
ty years later) to protest against the assault on 
JVIassachusetts through her senator, when he was 
almost assassinated by Brooks of Carolina. And 
when, a few days later, our first Kansas meeting 
was held there, resulting in a general subscription 
of money to aid the Free-State men in Kansas, 
Emerson was one of the large givers. As secre- 
tary of the meeting, I retained the subscription 
paper, and some of the names may be mentioned. 

[85] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
Concord was then a town of less than half its 
present population, — not twenty-three hundred 
in 1855, — and contained few persons of wealth, 
the largest property not exceeding two hundred 
and fifty thousand dollars probably. Yet the first 
subscription for Kansas was nearly one thousand 
dollars, and there were four givers of one hun- 
dred dollars each : Samuel Hoar, and his son Judge 
Hoar, John S. Keyes, and F. B. Sanborn. Four 
gave fifty dollars each : R. W. Emerson, Colonel 
Whiting, Nathan Brooks (father-in-law of Judge 
Hoar), and Ozias Morse; six gave twenty-five 
dollars each : George M. Brooks, Samuel Staples, 
John Brown, Jr., Daniel B. Clarke, Reuben Rice, 
and "A Lady" — probably either ^Irs. Emerson 
or Miss Hoar; then followed subscriptions of 
twenty, ten, and five dollars; while a few chil- 
dren and poor men gave from fifty cents to two 
dollars each. These subscriptions were afterwards 
increased by gifts of money, clothing, etc., until 
before a year passed they had amounted to nearly 
or quite two thousand dollars — or almost a dol- 
lar each for every inhabitant. When in the sum- 

[86] 



EMERSON 
mer following I became a member and secretary 
of the State Kansas Committee, and in that ca- 
pacity visited the National Committee's office in 
Chicago, and then went further west, to call on 
the Governor of Iowa, and traverse that State 
as far as to Nebraska City on the west of the 
Missouri River, I corresponded with Emerson. 
The next winter, he made the acquaintance of 
John Brown, the Kansas hero, who had come 
to visit me in Concord, and Emerson invited 
him to his house for a night. In this visit was ac- 
quired that full knowledge of Brown's character 
(though not of his secret plans) which enabled 
Emerson at the time of the A^irginia foray and 
capture of Brown, to tell his story effectively be- 
fore large audiences in Boston and Salem. INIr. 
Alcott, in 1878, gave me this account of Emer- 
son's and Thoreau's reception of the news of the 
Harper's Ferry affiiir. 

"When the tidings came that John Brown was 
captured, I was with Henry Thoreau at Emer- 
son's house. It was startling to all of us. Thoreau 
spoke of it then much as he soon afterwards did 

[87] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 

publicly — addressing his to^\Tismen in the parish 
vestry, and the people of Worcester and Boston, 
with his Pica for Captain John Broicn. [Mr. Al- 
cott thoiioht Thoreau rang the bell himself for 
this Concord address, but he probably confounded 
the occasion with that in August, 1844, when 
Emerson was to give his address on JJ\'st India 
Emancipation, mentioned earlier in this book. At 
that time Thoreau not only rang the bell, but 
previously had gone about the village, giving 
notice at the house-doors that Emerson would 
speak at the vestry.] 1 said that Brown's death 
would be a new crucifixion, and dwelt upon the 
ftict of Brown's martyrdom. Emerson said little 
then ; it seemed to be a painful subject to him. 
Some weeks after, when he had returned fi'om 
Salem, where he made that much-quoted speech 
in praise of Brown (of which he gave you the 
manuscript), he said to me, with an air of relief, 
'AVe have had enough of this dreary business.' 
But when we were making arrangements, with 
Thoreau and yourself and others, for that 'Ser- 
vice for the Death of a Martyr' which we held 

[88] 



EMERSON 
at the Concord Town Hall, the day of Brown's 
execution, Emerson made some of the best se- 
lections used, and read them himself at the meet- 
ing, as Thoreau did his selections from ^Nlarvell 
and Tacitus." 

In truth, as Hazlitt says of Sir Francis Bur- 
dett, there was no honest cause Emerson dared 
not avow, no oppressed person whom he was not 
forward to succor. He did not wholly agree with 
the Garrisonian Abolitionists, but he supported 
their mam cause, as he did Brown's. 

It was during my first residence in Concord, 
and while Hawthorne was our consular represen- 
tative at Liverpool, that I became acquainted 
through Emerson with the theories and caprices 
of ^liss Delia Bacon, of New Haven, who may be 
said to have invented, as much as any one person 
did, that craze now grown to such magnitude, — 
that Bacon of Saint Albans ^\Tote the plays and 
poems of Shakespeare. This was not exactly ]Miss 
Bacon's first whirn, but that the plays came as the 
product of a circle of great men of Elizabeth's 
court, — Raleigh, Bacon, and others ; a theory that 

[89] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
finds some countenance, though very shght, in 
John Toland's odd letter of two centuries ago 
declaring that there was such a circle, and that 
Giordano Bruno, then in England, belonged to it 
in 1585. Bruno dedicated one of his quaint books 
to Sidney, whom Toland thought one of the com- 
pany; and there are certain faint indications that 
Shakespeare had read and understood Bruno's 
ideas. JMiss Bacon, a brilliant, unhappy person, 
came to Emerson with her theory in 1852; he lis- 
tened to her with patience and interest, though 
not persuaded. When she was aided by a citizen 
of New York to pursue her inquiries in England, 
Emerson gave her letters to Carlyle, Doctor Chap- 
man, and other English friends, and in her des- 
titution he commended her to Hawthorne at 
Liverpool. He procured for her first essays on 
the subject a publisher in America, as Carlyle did 
in London. Putnains Magazine, then flourishing, 
and having among its contributors Henry James, 
G. W. Curtis, and (rarely) Thoreau and Emerson 
himself, accepted an article or two from INIiss 
Bacon. One such appeared there; another, in a 

[90] 



EMERSON 
manuscript or half-printed state, was lost on the 
way from New York to Concord, intrusted to a 
relative of Emerson. This loss, later, led to re- 
proaches from Miss Bacon which Emerson did not 
wholly escape. Her proud and whimsical char- 
acter, verging toward insanity, made these favors 
from her friends useless to her; and when she 
turned upon him (as later upon Hawthorne) with 
these reproaches, Emerson's angelic patience did 
not resent it. Finally, her insanity declared itself 
without disguise, and she was committed to an 
asylum not far from Shakespeare's grave. It fell 
to Emerson to communicate this dismal fact to 
her brother, Reverend Doctor Bacon of New 
Haven, who had been less tolerant of her infirmi- 
ties than the Concord authors had. Here is his 
noble letter: — 

"Concord, February 18, 1858. 
"Dear Sir: 

" I have received from Mrs. Flower, of Stratford-on-Avon, the en- 
" closed note, which I hasten to forward to you. I could heartily 
" wish that I had very different news to send you of a person who 
" has high claims on me, and all of us who love gefiius and elevation 
" of character. These qualities have so shone in Miss Bacon that, 

[91 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 

" fvhile their present eclipse is the greater calamity, it seems as if the 
" care of her in these present distressing circumstances ought not to 
" be at private, but at the public charge of scholars and friends of 
" learning and trtdh. If I can serve you in any manner in relation 
" to her, you will please to command me. 

" With great respect, 
"11. W. Emerson. 
"Dr. Leonard Bacon." 

"Osman," said Emerson, sketching himself, 
whether consciously or not, "had a humanity so 
broad and deep that, although his speech was so 
bold and fi'ee with the Koran as to disgust all the 
dervishes, yet there was never a poor outcast, ec- 
centric or insane man, — some fool who had cut 
off his beard, or who had been mutilated under 
a vow, or had a pet madness in his brain, — but 
fled at once to him. That great heart lay there so 
sunny and hospitable in the centre of the coun- 
try that it seemed as if the instinct of all suf- 
ferers drew them to his side. And the madness 
which he harbored he did not share." 

Instances confirmatory of this might be multi- 
plied. The milder eccentricities of genius, seen in 
his friends Alcott, Thoreau, and Channing, were 

[92] 



EMERSON 
of course more easily borne with, and were only 
spoken of by Emerson for instruction to a younger 
friend, or for a harmless smile. He told his daugh- 
ter Ellen that if he should die before Alcott and 
Channing "two good books will be lost." He 
formed the acquaintance with the three in the 
order followed above, — Alcott first and Chan- 
ning third. JVIr. Alcott told me in 1878, after we 
had bathed together in Walden, one hot August 
day, that he first heard Emerson preach in Doc- 
tor Channing's church in Federal Street, Boston, 
in 1829, on llie Universality of the Moral Senti- 
ment. "I was greatly struck with the youth of 
the preacher, the beauty of his elocution, and the 
direct, sincere manner in which he addressed his 
hearers. But I did not become acquainted with 
the young clergyman till after my return from 
Philadelphia (where Anna and Louisa were born) 
in 1834, when I established my Temple School in 
Boston. We became intimate, and soon after, I 
went with Emerson to hear him read a Phi Beta 
poem at Harvard College, in which was a strik- 
ing passage about Washington. As the proces- 

[93 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
sion was forming to enter the church where the 
oration and poem were to be given, Emerson took 
my arm (I not being a member of the Society, 
nor even a graduate of Yale) and saying, ' Come, 
we will not mince matters,' stepped briskly along 
with me at his side into the church. When his 
time came to read the poem from the platform, 
Emerson read smoothly for a while; then, not 
feeling satisfied with what he had written, closed 
his reading abruptly and sat down." 

The next day, as I was sitting with Emerson 
to entertain him while Wyatt Eaton was sketch- 
ing his portrait for Scribners 3Iagazine, I asked 
him about this poem. He said he had composed 
such a poem, and it may have had a passage in it 
about Washington; but he had quite forgotten 
the facts about its delivery in Cambridge. After 
his father's death, Doctor Emerson told me that 
this poem was written for delivery in 1834; that 
it contained two striking passages, one on Wash- 
ington and another on Lafayette, besides the lines 
on Webster which are printed among the posthu- 
mous poems (edition of 1884). The whole poem 

[94] 



EMERSON 
is in the measure of Pope and Dryden, with an 
occasional Alexandrine; and I fancy that the re- 
markable lines in Woodnotes beginning 

" In unplowed Maine he sought the lumberers' gang/' 

were intended for this poem, which has never 
been printed entire. Channing entered Harvard 
this year (1834) and Thoreau had entered the 
year before. 

At various dates from 1860 to 1880, Emerson 
spoke to me of Thoreau, saying, among other 
things: "He was a person who said and wrote 
surprising things, not accounted for by anything 
in his antecedents, — his birth, his education, or 
his way of life. But why is he never frank ? That 
was an excellent saying of Elizabeth Hoar's about 
him: 'I love Henry, but I can never like him.' 
What is so cheap as politeness? I have no social 
pleasure with Henry, though more than once the 
best conversation. Yes, I know he needs cherish- 
ing and care. Yet who can care and cherish, when 
we are so driven with our own affairs ? Longfellow 
and Lowell have not appreciated Thoreau as a 

[95] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 

thinker and writer, and Judge Hoar has confirmed 
them in their scepticism. Henry makes an instant 
impression, one way or the other. He met Thomas 
Cholmondeley in my house, in 1854, — you also 
met that singularly verdant Englishman there, 
— who was so pleased with the nonchalant man- 
ner of Thoreau that he went at once and engaged 
to board at INIrs. Thoreau's, where his admiration 
of Henry grew greater by daily contact. Thoreau 
did not at first appreciate his Shropshire friend, 
but came to value him highly." 

In 1874-75, Emerson was much in favor of 
printing Thoreau's journals entire, particularly the 
natural history in them. He said that he advised 
^liss Thoreau (who died in 1876) to put the jour- 
nals in my charge, as they had been for a time, 
while I was living in her house, where the manu- 
scripts remained for many years after Thoreau's 
death. He told her that I could well select the 
passages for printing, and could call on INIr. Chan- 
ning to aid in editing them, as she had done, soon 
after Henry's death. The mention of Channing 
displeased her; she told Emerson that, without 

[96] 



EMERSON 

asking her consent, or giving her knowledge of 
what he was to do with them, Channing had 
gone to Henry's room in the west attic, taken the 
journals, or some of them, and kept them for a 
time. Fearing that he would have access to them 
in my custody, she had requested Emerson to 
have them removed to the town library. At her 
death she left them to Mr. Blake. Emerson re- 
gretted this ; he had read the selections made by 
Mr. Blake and printed in The Atlantic, and did 
not think the best selections had been made, or 
the best arrangement followed. He said he read 
Channing's Thoreau, the Poet- Naturalist when it 
came out in 1873, but did not wholly like it; he 
would read it again, since I praised it.^ 

When Emerson's edition of Thoreau's Letters 
and a few poems came out, I remonstrated with 
him for printing so few of the verses. He replied 
that he had chosen the best, and that it would 
do Thoreau no credit to print them all, as I sug- 
gested, — every line, whether good or bad, as we 
do with the verse of the Greeks, whom Thoreau 
in some points so resembled. He remained firm 

[97] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
in his view, and afterwards told me (in 1878) that 
Thoreau's best poem was the earUest one, Sym- 
pathy, pubhshed first in The Dial in 1840. 

In his early relations with Alcott in Concord 
(1840-41), there were incidents that have escaped 
notice, I think. Soon after the Alcott family- 
reached Concord, spending the first night at the 
Middlesex tavern, INIr. Emerson was summoned 
there to perform the wedding ceremony for the 
landlord's daughter, JNIiss Wesson, who married 
Sam Staples, then an assistant in the tavern, 
but afterwards deputy sheriff and jailer; and at 
this ceremony Mr. Alcott was a witness. At INIr. 
Emerson's own Plymouth wedding in 1835, Sam, 
as the stable boy, had taken to him at the Old 
Manse the horse and chaise which was to convey 
the bridesjroom to JNIiss Jackson's Winslow INIan- 
sion for the ceremony. He was then living with 
his mother at Doctor Ripley's, and was paying for 
the board of both the sum of eight dollars only 
a week — with a stipulation that when both were 
at home, they should have a fire together in one of 
the parlors, and when Mr. Emerson was absent, 

[98] 



EMERSON 
his mother should have a fire in her own chamber. 
Considering that he was thus the more expensive 
of the two, he proposed to his grandfather that he 
should pay five dollars of the eight, and his mo- 
ther but three. In 1841, before the Alcotts had 
been in Concord a year, Emerson proposed, with 
the approval of his wife, that Mr. Alcott and his 
family (a wife and four children) should occupy 
"half our house and store-room free"; Mr. Alcott 
to work in the garden, and Mrs. Alcott to share 
the household labors with Mrs. Emerson. The 
families and tables were to be separate, "save one 
oven to bake our puddings and the same pot for 
our potatoes; but not the same cradle for our 
babies." Mrs. Alcott had the practical good sense 
to decline this generous but embarrassing offer; 
which was as near as Emerson ever came, I think, 
to the project of a community for himself. 

It was a little earlier than this that Emerson 
had formed his friendship with the shy and capri- 
cious poet Ellery C banning. They were brought 
together in Boston, in December, 1840, by the 
good offices of Samuel Gray Ward of Boston 

[99] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
(now of Washington), who had for some years 
shared with INIiss CaroUne Sturgis of Boston the 
hazardous position of Channing's intimate. Em- 
erson, who had seen some of his early verses, and 
even printed them in the October Dial, had long 
been eager to meet the poet; but he was either 
on the prairies of Illinois, or on the road to or 
from the West, or shunning society in Boston, or 
at Curzon's ^lill, or at "Aunt Becky Atkins's" in 
Newburyport. Finally they came together, these 
two poets, and each enjoyed the other. Their 
correspondence, fitful and moody on Channing's 
part, brief and wise from Emerson's pen, displays 
a singular friendship, extending over more than 
forty years, and, so far as Emerson is concerned, 
justifying his sweet verse in the Essays: — 

''I fancied he was fled, 
And, after many a year. 
Glowed unexhausted kindliness 
Like daily sunrise there." 

On Channing's part the conditions vary greatly. 
He never loses his admiration for Emerson's 
genius, nor quite fails in gratitude for the con- 

[ 100 ] 



EMERSON 
stant services which Emerson renders; but the 
moods of a disappointed man are hard to restrain. 
That remoteness and aloofness of Emerson at 
times, of which I spoke early in this book, gave 
Channing real agony; he was formed for the 
closest intimacy with a very few persons, he had 
fixed his affection upon Emerson, and it did not 
seem to him to be returned. "Unappreciated! It is 
this," he said, in a letter to another friend, "which 
strikes through the soul of a man like a slow fire. 
It is no longer Nature ; persons begin to assume 
a terrific value to me. I thought I had done with 
persons. No — they rise and tear me, year after 
year." But this is only one of the phases of this 
long friendship. At other times, and for the most 
part, there was cordiality in Emerson, and a nearer 
approach to sympathy than with a somewhat so- 
cially rude nature, such as Thoreau's was, in con- 
trast with Emerson's centuries of social culture. 

Channing's special gift was aesthetic ; he could 
take his friends, and he often took Emerson, to 
scenes in the landscape which opened new ideas in 
art, and new views of Nature. In literature, too, 

[101 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
as in art, his scope was wide and his jiidginent 
manly and deUcate. His humor was suffusing 
and irresistible ; the wretchedness of which he so 
often spoke, and which indeed haunted him, was 
soothed and often dispelled by his love of Victor 
Cousin's trinity: the Good, the Beautiful, and the 
True. These abstractions, as with Shakespeare 
and Homer, floated in a sea of humor, softly laps- 
ing or noisily mirthful, — the anerithmon gclasma 
of a Greek poet. To Emerson, whose study was 
JNIan and Nature, and whose life craved variety, 
C banning furnished that element of the unex- 
pected which is so apt to be lost in a long friend- 
ship, and perhaps was finally lost in this one. 

Thus, about 1878, when I was relating to Em- 
erson what constant topics of enlivening conver- 
sation Channing brought with him to his walks 
and talks with me, Emerson sighed and said, '* It 
used to be so with me, but of late he says little 
or nothing, and I do not find in him that 'in- 
exhaustible fund of good fellowship' of which 
Thoreau told Ricketson, and which was once in 
him." Probably there was a fault on both sides, 

[ 102 ] 



EMERSON 
— a little lack of confidence on Emerson's part, 
after C banning had printed, without consulting 
him, some passages copied with his consent from 
Emerson's journals, years before; and on Chan- 
ning's part some grief at this withdrawal. Tho- 
reau, in a similar experience, had confided to his 
journal the suffering he felt, but Channing, who 
kept journals but semi-occasionally, had no such 
resource. His letters to Emerson which are pre- 
served, and may some time be published, contain 
many passages showing deep insight and frequent 
grace of expression. During his short residence in 
New York in 1844-45, he thus described his way 
of letter-writing, and his preference for the coun- 
try over the city (December 19, 1844): — 

"Would to God I had something to tell you 
worth your hearing! Don't thank me in any of 
your letters for mine. When I am at home I run 
into your house; when I am away I run in by 
means of a letter. Do not look upon it in any 
other light, for Heaven's sake. I have no idea of 
being estranged at all from your house by coming 
a few paltry hundred miles and taking up my 

[103 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
quarters here. I fear I shall have a barren winter 
in New York. I do not require the city; it is no 
tug on my faculties. It does tug me to live in the 
country, — in the hard, still, severe, iron-bound 
fields of New England. There, in solitude, I paced 
many a day, treading wearily the lone avenues of 
the silent woods, sustained only in life by the 
breath of the sky. To dwell there is sufficient to 
test and reduce all the powers of a man, — a soli- 
tary, severe Ufe, a time of wailing and barrenness. 
There is not a field in that village but I have 
watered it with my tears." 

Few of Emerson's letters have been published; 
many of them should be. Those which appear in 
these pages will indicate what treasures they con- 
tain. That which I am now to give illustrates his 
constant generosity toward other authors, and his 
high appreciation of this poet of whom we have 
been hearing. It relates to the incomplete manu- 
script of Channing's "colloquial poem," as he 
quaintly called it, The Wanderer, which had been 
in my hands some months when I submitted it 
to Emerson, a year before it was printed by Os- 

[ 104 ] 










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a^^uO:^ /^ "^^^-^^^rt^ ^i:^^^^^ ^^^fe^ 



EMERSON 
good in Boston. He returned it to me, after some 
weeks, with this letter, sent to Springfield, where 
I was living from 1868 to 1872, in which year I 
returned to Concord. 

"Concord, 13 November, 1870. 
"My dear Sir: 

" / ought not to have returned the Manuscript you were so good and 
"careful to lend me, without special acknowledgmeiit. Bid on the 
" day when I receixied your note, I was busy with work which I was 
" to carry in the morning to Boston, to he more busy there in Jin- 
" ishing the same. Indeed, I have been such a hack lately with my 
" things, and as it happened, a sick hack, too, that I have not done 
"justice to that Manuscript in all this time. 

" Yet I read the tivojirst parts not only with great pleasure, but 
"with surprise at the power and thejidelity of the writing. When 
"you can see through the handnrriting, the thought is so active and 
" original^ the observation of nature so incessant, that it must be 
" attractive, I think, to all good readers. It absolves the writer in- 
" stantly from the charge of idleness or solitariness, by showing that 
" his immense vacation is all well spent. What botany a?id omi- 
" thology and tvonderful eye for landscape he has! I long to see 
" and read it all in fair print. 

" The third paii, the 'Sea' I did not finish, — perhaps did not 
" read far, — it seemed to me not nearly so happily ivritten; and 
" being, as I have said, myself preoccupied, I did not return to it. 
" I could not resist the showing 'Monadnoc' to Ellen and Edward, 
" who read it with loud joy. I heartily hope that the hook can and 

[105] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 

" will he printed, as it nill, I think, conquer to itself a valuable pnb- 

" lie, a?id thereby essentially benejit the author in more ways than a 

"good sale. 

" With great regard yours, 

"R.W.Emerson. 
"F. B. Sanborn, Esq." 

The Emerson children here mentioned as read- 
ing the descriptions of "Cheshire's haughty hill," 
as Emerson styled his favorite mountain in the 
Concord prospect, had themselves spent days and 
nights on Monadnoc with Channing and their 
younger friends; and a part of the poem dealt 
with them and their adventures there. The plea- 
sure they took in the reading had one inconven- 
ience for me. They could not refrain from quot- 
ing some of his own verses to the author, when 
taking tea at the Emerson house, and this re- 
vealed to the quick-witted poet that his manu- 
script, which he had intrusted to me to find him 
a publisher, had been in Emerson's hands, to 
whom he had not himself intended to show it till 
it should appear "in fair print." He therefore in- 
stantly wrote to me in Springfield, asking the 
return of the sheets. I had got a part of them 

[ 106] 



EMERSON 
copied, but not all, and I replied that I would 
bring them with me to Concord at an early date, 
when the copy was completed; and this I did, 
without explaining to him what use Emerson had 
made of the first part of the poem. Afterwards, 
when we had found a publisher, it was agreed 
that Emerson should write a preface, as he did 
— using some of the same expressions found in 
the above letter. 

During their long familiarity EUery Channing 
noted down a few of the remarks which Emerson 
made in a thousand conversations, and Emerson 
did the like by Channing. Some of these appear 
in the chapters of Channing's Thoreau which he 
called "Walks and Talks" and "Characters"; 
others will be given here. Some of Emerson's 
comments came out in The Atlantic Monthly last 
July (1902), but with misprints that injured their 
effect. The passage dated in 1859, for instance, 
where it relates to Channing's poem of Near 
Home, printed in 1858, should read thus: — 

"Channing, who writes a poem for our fields, 
begins to help us. That is construction, and better 

[ 107 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
than running to Charlemagne and Alfred for sub- 
jects. \car Home is a poem which would delight 
the heart of Wordsworth, though genuinely ori- 
ginal, and with a simplicity of plan which allows 
the writer to leave out all the prose. 'T is a series 
of sketches of natiu-al objects such as abound in 
New England, en wreathed by the thoughts they 
suggest to a contemplative pilgrim, — 

'Unsleeping truths by which wheels on Heaven's prime.' 

There is a neglect of superficial correctness which 
looks a little studied, as if perhaps the poet chal- 
lenged notice to his subtler melody ; and strokes 
of skill which recall the great masters. There is 
nothing conventional in the thought or the illus- 
tration ; but 

'Tlioughts that voluntary move 
Harmonious numbers' 

and pictures seen by an instructed eye." 

In his mention of "two notable acquaintances 
of mine, not else to be approximated," Emerson 
had in mind, I suppose, Henry Thoreau and Wil- 
liam Tappan, in whose acquaintance '*W. E. C. 

[ 108 ] 



EMERSON 
served as a companion of H. D. T., and Tappan 
of C banning." This, at any rate, is wliat occurred. 
Again, in the earhest mention of Channing in 
these Atlantic passages, the date should be 1840, 
not 1841, and the remark, "C.'s eyes are a com- 
pUment to the human race," etc., was meant to 
apply to Caroline Sturgis, to whom and of whom 
Channing wrote some of his best early poems. On 
this point Emerson said to me in 1874, and sub- 
sequently: "Ellery Channing's earliest friends 
were Caroline Sturgis and S. G. Ward, by whom 
he was introduced to me in 1840, after I had 
printed some of his verses in The Dial as 'New 
Poetry.' You know his father, Doctor Walter 
Channing; his uncle, Doctor Channing the min- 
ister, was the patron of my early studies in divin- 
ity. He was one of three persons whom I have 
heard speak more eloquently than any others; and 
I never could find in the hymns what I heard 
Doctor Channing read from them in his high 
pulpit. Ellery 's mother dying early [in 1822, 
while Doctor Channing was in England], he was 
brought up for a while by his mother's aunt, INlrs. 

[ 109] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
Bennett Forbes, sister of Colonel T. H. Perkins, 
who lived at ^lilton and was the mother of our 
friend, John ^lurray Forbes. Mrs. WiUiam Hunt 
[wife of the painter], who was herself a Perkins, 
ascribes all Ellery's peculiarities to the Perkins 
blood, of which she tells sad stories. His father. 
Doctor AValter Channing, went abroad for his 
medical education; when he went again in our 
time, and, returning from Russia, came here to 
Concord to see his son, he found Ellery just start- 
ing out for an afternoon walk. He did not give 
it up for the sake of seeing his father, but left 
him in the house where you once lived, to enter- 
tain himself as he might with his grandchildren. 
I have seldom heard Ellery speak of ]Mr. Al- 
cott otherwise than as a fool ; yet he has wTitten 
me some of the best things in praise of Alcott. I 
do not remember hearing of Majoi^ Leviticus, a 
long prose sketch, in which Alcott is satirized; 
but I now have in my possession a thick prose 
manuscript which Channing brought me many 
years ago, but which I did not think good enough 
to print, and in which probably Alcott is men- 

[110] 



EMERSON 
tioned. EUery began by being very intimate with 
INliss Elizabeth Hoar; then suddenly broke off 
the acquaintance, and would not look at her 
when he met her in the street; but he has re- 
cently [1874] renewed his intimacy with her." 

In this conversation, among others, Emerson 
said to me "I hope it will please INIr. Alcott to 
die first, so that I can write his biography." He 
added : " I formerly and usually took the greatest 
pleasure in his conversation. It is no longer so, 
but I suppose that is my own fault. I ain in the 
habit of saying that he cannot write ; but he has 
this gift of conversation, and the most distin- 
guished manners. Of this I have seen surprising 
instances at his conversations, in meeting the an- 
noyances of unappreciative interrupters; Alcott 
parrying their frivolous questions with great wdt 
and delicacy of tact." In 1878, w^hen Emerson was 
asked to send verses to be printed anonymously 
in A Masque of Poets, which Roberts was soon 
to publish, I told him that Mr. Alcott had some 
verses there, and that he had before printed sev- 
eral poems; to which he replied, "JNIr. Alcott is 

[ 111 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
a brilliant talker, but he cannot write anything; 
I should know he could never write a line of 
verse." It was in this conversation that Emerson 
assured me it was settled that he could not him- 
self write poetry; and a few moments after he 
added, "Others have found this out at last, but 
1 could have told them so long ago." His daugh- 
ter whispered that he had taken this idea from 
something Carlyle had said about John Sterling, 
whom he would not allow to be a poet, though 
he had written some fine verses. It was soon after 
this that Alcott began to compose those Sonnets 
and Canzonets published in 1882, just before Em- 
erson's death, which disprove the absolute nega- 
tive of this friend on his power of writing verse; 
for these octogenarian sonnets have a peculiar 
merit, not often found in portrait-sketches in 
metrical form. The earliest of the poems in this 
book came to my notice under affecting circum- 
stances, as this entry from my journal shows: — 

{Sunday, January 4, 1880.) "At half-past three 
to-day, INIr. Alcott called at my house by the 
river, to spend the afternoon, and read me some 

[ 112 ] 



EMERSON 
'notes' as he said. These proved to be the stanzas 
of a new poem on the death of his daughter 
JNIay (Madame Nieriker, the wife of Ernst Nie- 
riker of Baden in Switzerland, temporarily resid- 
ing in Paris), who died near Paris, on December 
30, 1879. She had been absent from Concord for 
nearly three years, and was married in London a 
year ago. The poem he calls Love's Morrow and 
it has been written in the nights and mornings 
since he had tidings of this youngest daughter's 
death, on the last day of the old year. He was 
himself eighty years old on the twenty-ninth of 
November last; his daughter Louisa forty-seven 
on the same day, and INIay thirty-nine years old 
last July. It seemed to me the finest of Mr. Al- 
cott's many poems which I have seen ; expressing 
with simplicity and pathos the grief he now feels. 
He desired me to counsel him as to the form in 
certain lines, and the use of particular words; 
some of these, at his suggestion or mine, were 
changed. He spoke touchingly and with discrimi- 
nation of May ; saying that he felt her loss more 
than that of his wife two years before. 'There was 

[ 113 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
an earthly future for May, with her child, but 
none for Mrs. Alcott at her age' (seventy-seven). 
As I was making for him a copy of the poem, 
with the changes, Mr. Emerson, who had called 
at JNIr. Alcott's house near by, to sympathize with 
him in his bereavement, finding he was with me, 
came over, and they had a long conversation by 
themselves. 

"It was now five o'clock and more, and, after 
some urging, he stayed to tea, and with him his 
daughter Ellen, who had called to escort him 
home, at the other end of the village. Mr. Alcott 
also stayed, and the conversation soon became 
general, and reminiscent, as it often is with Emer- 
son of late years. He said that a classmate of his 
brother William, John Everett, a younger bro- 
ther of Edward and Alexander Everett, was a 
superior person, with as much genius as Edward, 
and of a more imposing appearance. He was noted 
in College, as Edward had been, for eloquence in 
declamation, 'and I remember exactly how he 
uttered Byron's lines in Childe Harold, which we 
all knew by heart then: — 

[ 114 ] 



EMERSON 

''Three hosts combine to oiFer sacrifice, 
Three tongues prefer strange orisons on high, 
Three gaudy standards flout the pale blue skies; 
The shouts are France ! Spain ! Albion ! Victory ! 
The foe, the victim, and the fond ally," etc. 

When Byron had nothing to say, which was 
often, he yet said it magnificently. John Ever- 
ett's address to his classmates, on graduating, 
was printed at the time, and is a very good piece 
of writing. Edward Hale, his nephew, has lately 
sent me a copy, and I read it, after many years, 
with new pleasure. He became a tutor in the 
Transylvania University in Kentucky; but in a 
visit to Boston in 1826, after speaking eloquently 
in Faneuil Hall, he went home to a house where 
Miss Ellen Tucker was then living, and she heard 
him fall dead in a room over hers. 

" ' William Emerson, after graduating and teach- 
ing a school in Boston, went to Germany to com- 
plete his studies for the ministry; but had his 
opinions so much modified by what he learned 
there that he had doubts of his fitness for the 
pulpit. He went to see Goethe at Weimar, to 
ask his advice about preaching, and the old poet 

[ 115 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
urged him to conform to custom and preach in 
spite of his doubts. JNIy brother could not do 
that; he returned to Boston and came to see me 
in Chelmsford, where I had a school, — telling me 
that "he could not be a minister." I was very sad, 
for I knew how much it would grieve my mother, 
as it did. We were all ministers for generations. 
She was a lady of the old stock, my mother, — 
had been a member of Doctor Gardiner's Epis- 
copal Church in Boston, and was converted to 
Unitarianism by her husband, my father. Aunt 
JNIary Emerson was a genius and a great writer. 

'"Afterwards, when I was studying for the 
ministry at Divinity Hall in Cambridge, Profes- 
sor Andrews Norton was lecturing there ; and he 
allowed me, who for a year could use my eyes 
but little, to hear the lectures without being ex- 
amined on the subjects. If they had examined 
me, they would perhaps not have let me preach 
at all. Professor Norton was then a scholastic per- 
son, who had the air of living among his books at 
Shady Hill, near the College; he was not a man 
of society, as I think. Edward Everett, a younger 

[116] 



EMERSON 

scholar, who had studied in Germany, was ad- 
mired by all the young men when he taught 
Greek at Cambridge; we were sorry when he 
went into political life, and was sent to Congress, 
for which he was not fitted. Alexander Everett 
seemed to me a heavy person; his brothers had 
genius, but he had only talent.'" 

At this date, little more than two years before 
his death, Emerson seldom took part any longer 
in public conversations, being distrustful of his 
memory; which, however, was good for remote 
events, such as those above mentioned. He often 
spoke of his college days, and on one occasion 
related to Elizabeth Peabody, in the presence of 
his brother Charles, an incident of his intercourse 
with the professor of rhetoric, Edward Channing, 
a brother of the preacher, who had a great name 
for improving the style of his pupils. Emerson 
had written a poem for a college exhibition, and, 
being required to submit it to Professor Chan- 
ning, got only this remark by way of criticism, — 
"You had better write another poem." "What 
a useless remark that was!" said Emerson; "he 

[ in ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
might have pointed out to me some things in my 
work that were better than others, for all could 
not have been equally bad." Charles Emerson said, 
" He did not treat me so unhandsomely ; for when 
I took him a prose exercise once, he said to me, 
'Emerson, if Burke had wished to express such a 
thought as yours, he would have written so-and- 
so.'" "That was much better," said Waldo Emer- 
son, "for the very name of Burke is inspiring ; and 
what you had written could not have been wholly 
worthless, if it suggested any comparison with 
Burke." He was sure he had got little instruction 
or criticism from his professors that was of value, 
but he ascribed much to the stimulus and ex- 
ample given by his Aunt Mary. A friend once 
asked him, "What would have happened in the 
development of your mind if you had been born 
and grown up in the small town of Harvard, 
where your father was first settled as parish min- 
ister?" "That circumstance would have made 
little difference; Nature and books would have 
been with me." "But what if your Aunt Mary 
had not taken part in your training?" "Ah, that 

[ 118] 



EMERSON 
would have been a loss ! she was as great an ele- 
ment in my life as Greece or Rome." He told me 
once that she was never fairly just to her step- 
father, Doctor Ripley, because he could not write 
well, — being so good a writer herself. 

Emerson had preserved the only mention I 
ever heard of a college duel fought by his uncle, 
Daniel Bliss Ripley, the doctor's younger son, 
which caused his expulsion from Harvard, and 
his withdrawal to Alabama, where, at a town 
called Saint Stephens, he lived and died, without 
returning to his native land. "I once saw a letter," 
said Emerson, "from my father, William Emer- 
son, to George Cabot, the senator, and friend of 
Washington, asking him to interpose and pre- 
vent the duel between his half-brother, Ripley, 
and young X. But it was impossible to prevent 
the meeting; they fired one shot each, and the 
consequence fell heavily on my grandfather."^ 
He added that he had once dined at Waltham 
with Governor Gore, a "great gentleman," and 
Doctor Ripley's classmate. 

I have thus given many samples of Emerson's 
[ 119 ] 



THE P E R S O x\ A L I T Y OF 

table-talk, and will only add here those which 
Ellery Channing noted down: — 

Foreign Travel. 

"It is the American malady, — lues Americana; 
it is the cholera. I have been visiting in the coun- 
try, as I thought, — and behold, a lady, a profes- 
sor's w4fe in a little college, began to talk to 
me about the Bernese Alps! The Americans are 
wTctched, go where they wdll. George Bradford 
was miserable in Europe; he had left Rome and 
gone to Paris wdthout a reason, save that others 
were going; and now he wished to go back. I 
do not know that he should have gone even to 
Rome ; that is something exceptional. Paris does 
not seem good till you have left it." 

George Sand. 

"I have already lost her. According to my 

comprehension, good taste does not consist in 

magnifying the little, as she does, but in the 

selection of good things that can be properly 

magnified." 

[ 120] 



EMERSON 
Burns. 

"I was greatly surprised at the applause that 
greeted my speech at the Burns dinner in Boston 
the other day. Not having had a very good opin- 
ion of this Scottish songster, I renewed my ac- 
quaintance with him by a fresh reading, and to a 
better pui-pose. But I had only a few moments 
to prepare myself for speaking." 

Tennyson. 

"Walking out in the autumnal woods this after- 
noon with George Bradford, he thought that all 
Maud was filled with descriptions of these golden 
colors ; but when he looked in the book he found 
only these two lines, 

'And out he walked when the wind like a broken worldling wailed. 
And the flying gold of the ruined woodlands drove thro' the air.' 

Tennyson has not the fulness of Wordsworth. 
Milton would have hardly lifted his eyelids to see 
such things as Maud. Yet these Idylls of his show 
that the Ideal may still be built in England." 

Reading. 

"I like reading as well as ever I did in my 

youth. That is one thing that has lost no charm 

[121 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
for me. Give me my book and candle, and I am 
alone with the universe." 

Writing- 

(Said of a course of Lectures repeated). 

"All I have learned of writing is to scratch out 

a little. I have learned to omit the word 'very.' 

These published discourses of mine do not read 

as they did when they were delivered, so many 

years ago, — fourteen years, is it? Yes, I have that 

vanity of Doctor Ripley, who used without fail 

to read his sermons over to the family after the 

service in the afternoon. And so I repeat my old 

discourses." 

Future Life. 

"I think well of Goethe's saying, — that if Na- 
ture has given us these faculties, and I have em- 
ployed mine well, and faithfully to the end, she 
is bound still further to explain the questions 
which they put." 

Of a Little Lady. 

"She is such a perfect little Serenity! 'Her Se- 
rene Lowness,' we might call her." 



EMERSON 

Parker Pillsbury, the Abolitionist Orator. 
" He lives in the other Concord, our New Hamp- 
shire namesake, and has much of the New Hamp- 
shire vigor about him. He talks well in his chair, 
but does not read as well from his paper." 

Richard Cobden. 

"I dined with JNIr. Cobden at John Forbes's in 
Milton the other day, but he did not speak much 
directly. I saw he had the true English feeling, 
and was talking aside about his six per cents. He 
spoke interrogatively, and 1 thought was grow- 
ing seedy. I asked him why he did not let us 
make an occasion for him to speak ; but he said 
when he came over it was to keep his ears open 
and his mouth shut."* 

Nirvana. 

"Different persons among the Buddhists take 
their special views of the meaning of the doctrine 
of Nirvana. They have their Kants and Hegels, 
of course, who make each his own interpretation." 

Sickness. 

"James Burke, my man, when he is sick is 

[ 123 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
spleeny. He thinks he shall die, that he cannot 
earn half his wages, must go to his sister, — and 
it is all very dreadful. Strange how differently 
people view their colics and belly-aches! Some 
laugh at their dumps, and see the joke, as they 
should. JMrs. A and Mrs. B really believe that 
they are ill; and I have no doubt it is true for 
the moment. But let anything occur to tempt 
JSIrs. B out, and she goes at once." 

Debt 

"When my debts begin to grow clamorous I 
think I must take some means of satisfying them. 
I have now in my pocket three cents and a coun- 
terfeit half-dollar." 

To his PuhUsher 

(On being paid twice Jbr the same Essay). 

"Mr. Fields! I ought not to take this money; but 

I was a thief from the foundation of the world." 

South Carolina. 

"Think of a country where there is but one 
opinion ! where there is no minority. Fisher Ames 
was right in saying that the best majority was 

[ 124 ] 



EMERSON 
where there was but one over, — that is, where 
opinion was most evenly divided." 

This remark about South Carohna, of which it 
used to be said that "when Calhoun took snufF, 
the whole State sneezed," was not made in 1844, 
at the time of Samuel Hoar's expulsion from 
Charleston, but later, in connection with the out- 
break of the Civil War, in which, from first to 
last, Emerson took the side of Union and Lib- 
erty. But in connection with Mr. Hoar's affair, 
a characteristic citation may be given. Ellery 
Channing, writing from New York in the win- 
ter of 1844-45, had inquired of Emerson if the 
conduct of the "old Squire" (as he was called in 
Concord) had been quite brave enough in with- 
drawing. To this Emerson gave substantially the 
same reply which he gave to Channing's friend, 
S. G. Ward, as printed in the little volume, Let- 
ters from Emerson to a Friend, four years ago. 
He said (December 17, 1844): — 

"Mr. Hoar has just come home from Carolina, 
and gave me this morning a narrative of his visit. 

[ 125 j 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
He has behaved admirably well, I judge. One ex- 
pression struck me, which he said he regretted a 
little, afterwards, as it might sound a little vapor- 
ing. A gentleman who was very much his friend 
called him into a private room to say that the 
danger from the populace had increased so much 
that he must now insist on Mr. Hoar's leaving 
the city at once; and he showed him where he 
might procure a carriage, and where he might 
safely stop on the way to his plantation, which he 
would reach the next morning. JNIr. Hoar thanked 
him, but told him again that he could not and 
would not go, — and that he had rather his broken 
skull should be carried to INIassachusetts by some- 
body else, than to carry it home safe himself 
whilst his duty required him to remain. He did 
not consent to depart, but in every instance re- 
fused, — to the sheriff, and acting mayor, to his 
friends, and to the Committee of the South Caro- 
lina Association, — and only went when they came 
in crowds with carriages to conduct him to the 
boat, and go he must. Then he got into the coach 
himself, not thinking it proper to be dragged." 

[ 126 ] 



EMERSON 

It must be remembered that this venerable 
gentleman was in Charleston as the envoy of 
Massachusetts, to protest against the imprison- 
ment of her free colored seamen, while their ves- 
sel lay in port, — so fearful were the proud gentry 
of that State lest the contagion of liberty might 
be communicated to their slaves. Poetic justice 
required that the insult to Massachusetts, and to 
Kansas in 1856, should be requited in less than 
twenty years by the presence in South Carolina 
of Colonel Higginson's black regiment, recruited 
from slaves, and of Colonel Montgomery's sol- 
diers, also recruited from slaves. Emerson viewed 
this recompense with satisfaction; and when, a 
few years earlier, I had carried Captain Mont- 
gomery, then a Kansas partisan leader, to his 
house, he received the gallant descendant of the 
Scotch Montgomeries, bearing himself like a 
French Chevaher, with much hospitality. 

Hospitality, in the usual sense, and also in the 
broader meaning of liberality of soul toward 
other men's thought, was a distinguishing trait 
of Emerson. Though far from wealthy, and at 

[ 127 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF 
times much narrowed in his income by bad in- 
vestments, his house was open to more guests 
than any other in Concord, and he also enter- 
tained his visitors from a distance very often in 
Boston. In his earher acquaintance with Walt 
Whitman, he desired to bring him to Concord, 
in the spring of 1860, when Whitman was in 
Boston, printing a new edition of his Leaves of 
Grass; and Alcott and Henry Thoreau had the 
same wish, to invite him to their houses. But 
it was found that Mrs. Emerson, Mrs. Alcott, 
and Sophia Thoreau were so prejudiced against 
Whitman by some things in his book, that they 
would not join in the invitation. Twenty-one 
years later, in September, 1881, when Whitman 
did make his only visit to Concord, as my guest, 
Mrs. Alcott and Miss Thoreau were dead, but 
INlrs. Emerson came with her husband to an 
evening conversation at my house, and cordially 
invited him to dine with her the next day, as he 
did; and Louisa Alcott, who had much admira- 
tion for Whitman, came with her father, and 
bore her part in the colloquy. Whitman has de- 

[ 128 ] 



EMERSON 

scribed this visit in one of his books ; it occurred 
but a few months before Emerson's death. Emer- 
son had told me, long before, that when he pro- 
posed to Doctor Holmes and Mr. Longfellow to 
invite Whitman to one of the monthly dinners 
of the Boston Saturday Club, of which all three 
were members, neither of these poets manifested 
any wish to meet Whitman, and he was not in- 
vited. 

I have dwelt, in this book, chiefly on personal 
traits and events well known to me, in the life of 
this great man, leaving them to bear their own 
testimony to his character. Fitly to delineate that, 
on the broader canvas of a biography, though I 
should wish to do so, would be beyond my powers, 
as it has proved to be with most who have at- 
tempted it. No adequate memoir (though several 
excellent sketches have appeared) preserves for 
those who knew him, or for those who read him 
thoughtfully, his remarkable traits in their com- 
pleteness ; while many writers have misconceived 
him gi'eatly. Time is needed, even the distance of 
a century, to show his colossal portraiture in due 

[ 129 ] 



THE PERSONALITY OF EMERSON 
perspective. One quality in him impressed all who 
met him: his freedom from the common defects. 
Henry James, Senior, with his theologic vocabu- 
lary, called him "the unfallen man," and Alcott, 
with others, used the same figure of speech. My 
dear friend Ednah Cheney, writing to Ariana 
Walker in 1852, after hearing him in Boston, 
said: "Emerson's lectures are finished. He never 
was higher or nobler; never so clear, humane, 
and practical. He looks like an angel fresh from 
Paradise, and speaks as if he had never been 
at the Tower of Babel, but had retained his first 
heavenly accents." This youthful estimate has a 
touch of Concord hyperbole, but goes to the root 
of the matter. He had something in his mind 
and heart which could so be described. I must 
say, as did Sir Robert Harley's chaplain of that 
grand Englishman: "My language is not a match 
for his excellent virtues: his spiritual lineaments 
and beauties are above my pencil. I want art to 
draw his picture." 



NOTES 



NOTES 

Note 1 (page 29). 

Like Emerson's own character, which had surprising contra- 
dictions in it, Mary Emerson could be differently viewed from 
diverse standpoints. A relative of hers, still living, who spent 
some time with Doctor Ripley in the Old Manse, was about 
to leave Concord, and her aged kinsman thus addressed her; 
"I will give you a short lecture, my dear. In your future course 
of life, remember to follow Duty rather than Inclination; a 
good rule, of which your Aunt Mary has always held the op- 
posite." She certainly believed that she did her whole duty, 
however disagreeable it was to others. At her death in May, 
1863, in her ninetieth year, I wrote of her in the Boston Co7n- 
monwealth (to which Alcott, Channing, Thoreau, posthumously, 
and Emerson contributed — the last sparingly): "Her con- 
versation was a singular melange of sincere devotion, worldly 
wisdom, wit, and anecdote; and she was thought to have the 
power of saying more disagreeable things in a half-hour than 
any person living. Reproof was her mission, she thought, and 
she fulfilled it unsparingly. But she knew how to be tolerant, 
was a great humorist, and loved to meet forcible persons who 
would not agree with her." A kinswoman thought a young 
editor ought not to have told so much truth of the deceased, 
and complained to Emerson, who read the paragraph, and 
merely said (as was reported to me by another niece), " I see 
that he was well acquainted with Aunt Mary." 

Note 2 (page 97). 

This was said in 1878; but in 1880 he did not remember hav- 
ing x'ead it at all. 

[ 133 ] 



NOTES 
Note o (page 119). 

The portrait of this handsome young duellist has long hung 
in the hall at the Old Manse. 

Note 4 (page 123). 

Emerson had heard Mr. Cobden in England in 1847, and de- 

seribed the speeeh in a letter to Thoreau. 



A LiMiTEi> EniTioN of five hundred copies of this book was 
printed on French hand-made paper, and twenty-five copies on Japan 
paper, by D. B. Updike, The Merrymount Press, Boston, 
in March, 1903. This is copy N^- ^_ >-x. 



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